

Class T Z>7 
Book .0,6,9 
Copyright N? 

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JACK HEATON, OIL PROSPECTOR 



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“ ‘NOW WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS WHAT YOU INTEND TO DO ABOUT 


IT?’ "—Page H5 



JACK HEATON 

OIL PROSPECTOR 

BY 

A; FREDERICK COLLINS 

•» 

Author of ,4 Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator " 41 Inventing 
for Boys," “Handicraft for Boys," 44 The Boys' 
Airplane Book," etc. 

1WITE SIX ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
CHARLES E. CARTWRIGHT 



NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






Copyright , 1920 , by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 

All Rights Reserved 


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OCT - I 192a 

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©CI.A576689 


TO 

VIRGIL BYARD COLLINS 



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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I High Finance 1 

II Heading South 18 

III Bad Hombre from Chilili .... 34 

IV “Elevate and Donate!” 54 

V Through the Desert 72 

VI Into the Oil Fields 91 

VII The Abandoned Gushers .... 109 

VIII Senor Lopez, Bandit and Promoter . 130 

IX “Remember the Alamo!” 151 

X With Uncle Sam in Mexico .... 177 

XI American Oil for Americans . . . 194 

XII A Big Time in the Old Town . . . 216 


















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ILLUSTRATIONS 


“ ‘Now what I want to know is what you intend 
to do about it?’ " Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGE 


“ ‘Followed two reports almost simultaneously' " 52 

“ ‘One move, one word, Chilili, and I'll blow the 
top of your head off ' " 86 

“ ‘What stumps me is why that German outfit is 
pumping oil while the Mexican Consolidated 
is shut down ' " 108 

“Madly Lopez' mob broke and scattered" . . 188 

“Mrs. Heaton vowed she would never let him go 
away again " 226 




X 



JACK HEATON, OIL PROSPECTOR 





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JACK HEATON, OIL 
PROSPECTOR 

CHAPTER I 

HIGH FINANCE 

T HERE was joy in the home of the Hea- 
tons in Montclair, for Jack had recently 
returned after an absence of six months in 
The Arctics. But the happiness that marked his 
home-coming was suddenly changed into gloom 
for disaster had selected Mr. Heaton for its 
victim and he had been hit hard. 

The old gentleman had just received a report 
on the status of a certain oil property in Mexico, 
in which he was interested, and the type-writ- 
ten sheets of the former, as well as numerous 
beautifully engraved stock certificates printed 
in a rich green with an impressive gold seal 
on each one, lay spread out before him on his 
desk. They represented a small fortune. 

For hours Mr. Heaton had poured over the 
l 


2 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


reports and his forehead was furrowed with the 
force of distressing thoughts. If you could 
have seen him at this time you would have 
observed that his shoulders, which were so 
square and business-like when he began the 
task, finally began to slope and at the end of the 
ordeal they slumped entirely. 

Trying to discover a solution for his weighty 
problem, he got up and began to pace the floor, 
forth and back across the library, thence into 
the parlor and back again. Occasionally he 
would pause before one of the frosted windows 
and peer out through it to the street, as though 
he was waiting for some one, then slowly shake 
his head and resume his circumscribed walk 
again. 

As he was a man of wide business experience, 
and one who always had himself well in hand, 
his actions were quite unlike the imperturbed 
Mr. Heaton that his family and friends were 
acquainted with; but he was laboring now 
under great pressure and the best of men some- 
times go to pieces under such untoward circum- 
stances. 

Again he returned to his desk and singling 
out the damaging statements he glared fever- 


HIGH FINANCE 


3 

ishly at them. Then came his first words of 
despair 

“Swindled! . . ruined! !” he cried bitterly; 
“my savings of a lifetime gone — simply wiped 
out ! ’ ’ 

At this instant there came the crunch of 
quick, firm footsteps on the chilled gravel walk 
outside and a moment later Jack Heaton 
bounded in with all the life and enthusiasm of 
youth, almost ran into the library, leaped over 
the table with the agility of an Andes gazelle 
and tossed his hat on his father’s head with the 
adroitness of a juggler. 

“Hello again, Had!” he ejaculated cheerily; 
“busy?” 

Mr. Heaton turned slowly in his chair toward 
his son, with the latter’s hat still setting on his 
head at a rakish angle, and to say that it gave 
him an undignified appearance, especially in 
connection with his rueful countenance, would 
be putting it altogether too mildly. 

“No, Jack, not busy just now, but I will be 
very soon. I thought when I retired a couple 
of years ago I was through working hut I have 
just learned that I must take up the lines again 
where I laid them down — that is if I can. 


4 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

Everything is gone — wiped completely out, and 
I am right back now where I was twenty-five 
years ago.” 

“Why, what has happened, Dad?” ques- 
tioned Jack, who had not dreamed that a catas- 
trophe was impending. 

“Nothing more or less, my boy, than that I 
have lost the savings of a quarter of a century 
and that I must now start all over again. It’s 
hard, bitter hard, to have to face the world at 
my age penniless and to fight its uncertainties 
again. It will be hardest of all, though, on 
Mother, for we will have to give up our home 
here and live hand to mouth until I get started 
once more.” 

“What has brought about all this and wh y 
haven’t I known anything about it before?” 

“It came about like this, Jack: As you know, 
when you were a little chap I got into the oil- 
engine business and worked my w 7 ay up until 
I became the general manager of the New York 
office of the Singer Company. Then you grew 
up, became a radio operator and started on 
your various travels in search of adventure and 
wealth and you have been, I should say, very 


HIGH FINANCE 5 

successful in your quest of both, considering 
that you are yet a hoy. 

I resigned as general manager of the Singer 
Crude Oil Engine Company for two reasons, 
the first of which was that I felt I had accumu- 
lated enough of this world’s goods to enable 
us to live comfortably for the remainder of our 
lives, and, second and chiefly, because the direc- 
tors of my company were so ultra-conservative 
that newer and more progressive firms were 
slowly but surely making inroads on our busi- 
ness. 

4 ‘When I withdrew I sold my holdings .in the 
company and, knowing oil, the ever-increasing 
demand for this great commodity, and the huge 
profits to be made out of it, I invested our nest- 
egg in oil stocks. It was at the time when the 
Texas and Mexican oil fields began to boom.” 

“I know,” broke in Jack; “that was soon 
after I came back from my whaling trip. I 
recollect too that there was a lot of unldcat oil 
stock being sold at anywhere from ten cents to 
ten dollars a share. I hope you didn’t get 
roped in for any of that paper stuff.” 

“No, my boy, I was not quite as green as 
that, but almost. While it is true that the 


6 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


securities I bought were those of a new organ- 
ization — -the Mexican Consolidated Oil Com- 
pany , Limited , which is located at Terrazas, 
Chihuahua in Mexico — at the same time I had 
an oil expert investigate the proposition. He 
went down there and personally looked over 
the property. I am satisfied he did it thor- 
oughly and he reported that everything was 
high-grade and 0. K. in every respect. On the 
strength of the rapidly developing oil condi- 
tions and the expert’s report I sunk all of my 
savings — one hundred thousand dollars — in the 
securities of the Mexican Consolidated. 

6 ‘ Almost up to the present time the company 
has fully come up to my expectations and I have 
received a large dividend quarterly. When the 
last dividend was due I learned to my surprise 
that it would not be paid. I immediately wrote 
to Mr. Simmonds, a friend of mine at El Paso, 
who also owns stock in the company, and this 
report here is the result of his inquiries. 

“You can look over these papers later if yon 
care to. In brief, they disclose the following 
astounding facts : First, that by some hook or 
crook ten of the seventeen oil producing wells 
of the company have been turned over to a 


HIGH FINANCE 


7 


Mexican official for a ridiculously low sum and, 
quite as extraordinary, the other seven wells 
which up to two months ago had been produc- 
ing to their usual capacity suddenly showed 
little or no signs of activity.” 

1 1 Have the officers of the Mexican Consoli- 
dated Company made any statement to explain 
this strange condition of affairs?” asked Jack. 

“The New York representative of the com- 
pany informs me that there has been a steady 
decrease in the daily output of the seventeen 
wells for some time and that the officials were 
convinced the source of the oil supply was about 
exhausted. He also told me they claim they 
sold the ten gushers to a Mexican Govern- 
ment official at a nominal figure— a mere song in 
fact — because he had grown suspicious. Mr. 
Perez, the oil company’s representative here, 
says he has not been able to get word from the 
oil fields for the past two weeks for the revolu- 
tionists are in control of that part of the coun- 
try.” 

“The whole thing looks very fishy to me,” 
reflected Jack. “If it was known that the oil 
supply was rapidly being exhausted the com- 
pany could not have sold them at any price, let 


8 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


alone to a Mexican official. And can a company 
dispose of its property without notifying its 
stockholders V’ 

“Anything can be done in Mexico to-day if 
the men higher up are permitted to partici- 
pate,” Mr. Heaton answered with some bitter- 
ness. 

“By which you mean that they must get a 
rake-off /’ said Jack, whose choice of words 
was not as dignified as that of his father’s. 

“Exactly. The most crooked looking part of 
it all is that the company which now purports 
to be almost insolvent has, through a Wall 
Street broker, offered to buy my stock in at 
ten dollars a share. If I accept their offer I 
will lose ninety thousand dollars cold and that 
spells ruin for me. On the other hand I can 
save ten thousand dollars from the wreck if I 
sell now and that will help me to get a fresh 
start. Now, Jack, you see just how the matter 
stands.” 

Jack sat for a few moments lost in thought. 
He was naturally high spirited and always opti- 
mistic, by which I mean that he had the nerve 
to look on the bright side of life no matter how 
black it seemed. For many months he had been 


HIGH FINANCE 


9 


planning a trip to penetrate the jungles of 
Brazil in search of a hidden valley of diamonds 
which had been revealed to him by Princess 
Mabel when he was a captive of the old cannibal 
overlord, King Oopla. 

His father’s sudden reversal of fortune 
meant that he would have to postpone this new 
high adventure, at least for the time being, and 
bend all of his energies and concentrate all of 
his efforts to help him out of the difficulty and 
to retrieve his fortune if possible. 

Jack had already seen enough of Mexican 
character when he was a wireless operator in 
the coastwise service to know that many Mexi- 
cans are most unscrupulous in their undertak- 
ings of love, war and business. That the Mexi- 
can Consolidated Company , Ltd., or some one 
interested in it, was trying to buy back his 
father’s holdings for a measly ten per cent of 
the amount he had originally paid for them 
convinced him that there was “dirty work at 
the crossroads” going on. 

“Isn’t it the usual way, Dad, for a company 
which has gone bankrupt to simply shut up 
shop and make no attempt to pay its stock- 
holders even in small part?” 


io JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


4 ‘That is the way that companies which are 
organized for the sole purpose of selling stock 
generally wind up, but legitimate companies 
that are insolvent are placed in the hands of 
receivers, who operate them for the mutual 
benefit of all concerned,” his father explained. 

This sudden generosity on the part of the 
alleged defunct oil company to take up the out- 
standing stock on a ten per cent, basis aroused 
Jack’s fighting blood as well as his suspicions. 
That in its present state the stock was hardly 
worth the paper it was printed on, in-so-far as 
his father was concerned, Jack hadn’t the 
slightest doubt, but he was equally certain that 
it was worth its face value to some one else. 

“Don’t sell yet,” he advised his father. 
“There’s a snake in the grass somewhere and 
it’s the one best bet that to sell now means a 
dead sure loss to you of ninety thousand pesos 
in American gold. While you may lose all by 
hanging on to your stock, at the same time it 
is my belief that by hanging on to it you stand 
a long chance of winning out. I’ve found out, 
Dad, that it’s hanging on the last fifteen min- 
utes that usually wins the fight for a fellow.” 

“I know, Jack, but if I should hang on and 


HIGH FINANCE 


1 1 


tlie stock should prove worthless in the end 
I’ll lose every cent and I can’t afford to take 
the risk on Mother’s account.” 

“But if you sell fo these bunco men you will 
only save ten thousand dollars and that’s not 
nearly enough. What we want to do is to save 
all you have invested in these oil securities — 
if they are worth anything, and I believe they 
are. 

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Dad. As you say, 
I’ve been pretty successful in my undertakings, 
considering that I’ve been a rolling stone, and 
I’ve something more than ten thousand dollars 
saved up from my various ventures. If you’ll 
agree to hang on to the stock I’ll cover your 
ten thousand should you lose out, with my own 
money. ’ ’ 

“That is certainly fine of you, Jack,” ex- 
claimed Mr. Heaton with a certain suspicious 
moisture in his eyes, “but I really couldn’t 
accept your hard-earned money, my hoy, under 
any circumstances.” 

“Hard earned nothing,” Jack replied lightly; 
“why, for every adventure I’ve had there was 
not only the fun of it hut I’ve been fairly well 
paid besides. That last trip to the Arctics I 


12 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


made on the whaler, though, netted me more 
than all the others pnt together and it was what 
I’d call easy money, too. 

“ What’s more to the point, yon ’re not going 
to have to accept anything from me because 
you’re not going to lose; no, not as long as I 
have two good mitts to prevent these crooks 
from swindling you,” declared Jack, emphasiz- 
ing his meaning by drawing a bead on an imag- 
inary Mexican oil promoter with his index 
fingers. 

“But how do you propose going about it, 
Jack? It looks to me as if the horse has already 
been stolen and it’s only a question of time 
until the thieves will get the buggy.” 

“Well, one thing’s certain, and that Is as 
long as there’s no one on the ground to look 
things over you’ll always be in the dark. So 
to-morrow I’m going to ‘hop on a rattler,’ as 
Bill calls a train, run down to Chihuahua* and 
look things over as your special representative. 
Never mind about the expense, Dad, I’ll take 
care of that, and what’s more, I’m going to 
move heaven and earth to see that you get what 
you are entitled to. You can bet your bottom 


* Pronounced Che-wa-wa. 


HIGH FINANCE 


13 


dollar that no pack of greasers can swindle my 
Dad out of his life’s savings and get away with 
it.” 

“ Mexico is a bad country at best to get into 
and especially at this time, Jack. You know 
the natives haven’t got any use for the Ameri- 
cans and right now it looks as if we are going 
to have more trouble with her. ’ ’ 

“ All I’ve got to say is that I’ve been through 
one war already, and I just missed being served 
up as a cannibal stew, so I guess I can’t fare 
much worse at the hands of those blood-thirsty 
greasers . Besides, I’m going to take my old 
buddy, Bill Adams, who was chief gunner on 
the submarine H-24, with me. Bill’s served in 
the old Regular Army on the border, speaks 
Mex like a native and knows the greasers from 
A to izzard. ’ ’ 

“Son, you certainly khQw how to cheer a 
fellow up and put confidence into him after he’s 
lost all hope. If you are so determined to see 
that your poor, old Dad gets a square deal, 
why, all that I can say is go ahead, and you 
can rest assured that my support is back of 
you and my blessing with you.” 

“I’ll have to go to New York right away and 


14 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

dig up Bill, ^ y said Jack, “so, as they say in 
Mex, Adios.” 

With that the youth hurried out to catch a 
train for the city, where his friend lived with 
his widowed mother. Bill, be it known, had 
been with Jack through many of his adventures. 
Although the gentleman in question could 
hardly be classed as a high-brow, having lived 
and worked the greater part of his life in the 
gas-house district in upper Manhattan, he meas- 
ured up to what he had chosen to style himself, 
namely, “a dead-game sport, see cull.” 

As Jack had often said, Bill was “white clear 
through/’ and as he was absolutely unafraid 
he could be depended on under any and all 
circumstances. Moreover, he was handy with 
a gun of any kind or size, and all of these 
qualifications made him a pal worth while. 

Reaching 34th Street via the Hudson Tubes, 
Jack took the subway to Broadway and 128th 
Street. There he descended to the street, for 
this locality lies between two hills and the sub- 
way penetrating them is connected by means of 
a great viaduct. 

After a walk of some five blocks east along 
Manhattan street he came to a two-story build- 


HIGH FINANCE 


15 


ing and on the door a glittering brass plate 
proclaimed that the gymnasium of Prof . Wil- 
liam Adams, Physical Instructor, was on the 
second floor. 

Jack mounted the steps two at a time and 
without any formality walked right into the 
professor’s gym. In the center of the large 
room a platform was built up and this squared 
ring was four-posted and roped. Engaged 
therein were two husky looking specimens of 
the genus homo, ducking, side-stepping, upper- 
cutting and in other devious ways disporting 
themselves in the gentlemanly art of self- 
defense. 

In one corner was a rich brewer who had 
evidently consumed over-much of his own out- 
put, toiling, sweating and grunting at the wall 
weights. Two more portly patrons with red 
noses who looked as though they had been 
melted and poured into their gym suits, were 
playfully throwing a medicine ball at one an- 
other, emitting the while sounds like those of 
a porker under a gate, as it slipped through 
their flabby arms when they would shoot bale- 
ful glances at a third party who deigned to 
notice them occasionally. 


i6 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


The third party was none other than the 
famous Prof. William Adams, and he was in 
turn directing his attention to a sallow-faced, 
bilious-looking youth who feebly tugged at the 
oars of a rowing machine. 

Listen for a moment to what the professor 
is saying. “Come on, now, cull! Snap out of 
that dope. You’re not learning how to play 
the pianny now. I’m trying to work some of 
the cigarettes and cabarets out of that puny 
little system of yours. Say, I’m a Hindu if a 
good breath of wind wouldn’t blow you so far 
that it’d take your mother and seven dollars in 
postage stamps to find you again.” 

Then catching the baleful glances cast by the 
medicine-ball experts, he adds, “All right, 
butter-tubs, time’s up and you can quit now; 
but to-morrow fifteen minutes longer for yours, 
see!” A second later he was in the ring. 
“Fierce footwork, Tommy — think you was 
dancin’ with your grandmudder. What’s the 
matter — got lead in your shoes? That guard 
of yourn, Paddy, would make an old timer think 
he’d swallowed a feather and tickle hisself to 
death.” 

It was at this stage of the game that Bill 


HIGH FINANCE 


17 

Adams, alias Professor William Adams, caught 
sight of Jack. 

* ‘Hello, Buddy, how’s tricks,” and then see- 
ing the sober expression on his sometime pal’s 
face he added, “What’s eatin’ you now?” 

Bill lead the way into his private office, which 
consisted of a corner roughly partitioned off, 
and Jack lost no time in unloading his troubles 
on his old side-kick. 


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CHAPTER II 


HEADING SOUTH 

L IKE most of the human race who are born 
in poverty and have to battle every inch 
of the way for the mere right to live, Bill 
Adams could not tolerate injustices, neither 
could he bear to stand idly by where there was 
suffering. Naturally, since this was his dis- 
position, he was all sympathy as he listened to 
Jack’s tale of woe and he was anxious to help 
right the great wrong that had been done Mr. 
Heaton. 

“You’re dead right, Jack,” he said emphati- 
cally, “it’s too big a roll to let a bunch of 
greasers get away with without putting up a 
fight. Sure I’ll go down with you and I’m glad 
of the chanst.” 

“But how about these physical wrecks here 
that you’re restoring to youthful health and 
vigor! What are you going to do with them!” 
queried Jack. 


18 


HEADING SOUTH 


19 


“Oh, them blokes will get along all right 
without me. These birds that are in bum health 
are as funny as a crutch. First they come to 
me and beg me to make men of them and then 
as soon as I start in they begin to grouse, and 
kick and call me a slave-driver. I’m sick of 
the whole bunch of them. If their brains were 
made of dynamite they couldn’t blow a thimble 
over. That’s why I’ll be glad to get away for 
a while. I need the rest-cure and the sooner we 
start the better I’ll like it.” 

‘ ‘ Then what do you say to leaving to-morrow 
morning?” 

“Suits me fine,” said Bill; “when and where 
will I meet you?” 

“At the Pennsylvania Station at ten-thirty 
sharp in the morning. The train pulls out at 
ten-fifty and I’ll have the tickets and our pass- 
ports 0. K.” 

“I’ll be there.” 

When Jack reached home that evening he 
found his father in quite a cheerful frame of 
mind for a man who had been swindled out of 
a fortune. 

“A man called on me shortly after you left, 
Jack, and he insisted on giving me a certified 


20 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


check, or the cash if I preferred it, for ten thou- 
sand dollars in payment for my thousand 
shares of stock. He told me that this would 
positively be my last chance to sell at any price. 
On your advice I flatly refused,” explained Mr. 
Heaton. 

“ Bully for you, Dad. Bill and I are leaving 
to-morrow morning on the Pennsy for El Paso 
and from there on down to the oil fields of Ter- 
razas.” 

Both his father and mother had grown so 
accustomed to Jack’s long and hazardous trips 
that they thought little more of his going to 
Mexico than if his destination had been Phila- 
delphia. 

Shortly after dinner, which, as I once men- 
tioned before, is always served in the evening in 
Montclair, Jack went up to his room and began 
to carefully overhaul his belongings. From the 
bottom drawer of his dresser he produced a 
pair of prospector’s boots, serviceable alike for 
riding or walking, two pairs of riding breeches, 
four flannel shirts, two silk bandannas, a broad 
brimmed, low crowned Stetson hat and, last of 
all, a Colt’s .45 caliber revolver and a leather 
cartridge belt and holster. 


HEADING SOUTH 


21 


From a closet came a .30 caliber Winchester 
rifle, a leather scabbard for carrying it on 
horse-back, and finally an extra large canteen. 
These articles of clothing and implements of 
warfare he packed in his big suitcase. To the 
end that he might get up early he turned in 
though it was not yet ten o’clock. 

For once in his life he was unable to go to 
sleep the instant he touched the bed. Instead, he 
lay awake thinking, for he realized that he was 
about to undertake an adventure far more 
dangerous than any he had ever made before. 
And, what was more to the point, his father’s 
fortune was at stake and he was determined 
to learn the truth about those oil properties 
whatever the odds might be. Thus it was that 
the chimes of St. Andrew’s Church round the 
corner struck eleven, twelve and then one 
o’clock before Jack got to sleep. 

The lone policeman making his rounds in the 
cold wintry night passed the house but he did 
not see the skulking figure that crept from 
shadow to shadow until it was directly under 
the library window. There it stopped, then 
drew from its coat a long bar of steel, sharp- 


22 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


ened at one end like a cold chisel, and with this 
jimmy it pried np the window. 

This done, the marauder was inside the house 
the next instant. He threw a small spot-light 
from an electric flash-lamp on the floor of the 
darkened library, then caused it to travel up the 
wall and finally, when he brought it to rest, it 
covered the door of a wall-safe. The burglar 
gave a grunt of satisfaction and set the lamp 
on the table so that the circle of light fell full 
upon the dial of the combination lock. 

His next move was to draw from the pocket 
of his roomy coat a breast drill with which he 
quickly drilled a hole in the steel door near the 
lock. This done, he poured a little high ex- 
plosive into the hole, put a fuse with a blasting 
cap on one end into it and lit the free end. 

The safe-blower then stepped into the parlor 
to await the result of his work, but he had not 
long to wait, for almost immediately there came 
a muffled thud which jarred the house like a 
young earthquake. He returned to the safe, 
threw his flash light on it and found that the 
door had been blown open and the contents ex- 
posed to plain sight. The burglar rummaged 


HEADING SOUTH 


23 

through the papers and scanned them with hot 
haste. 

When the explosion occurred Jack sat holt 
upright in bed. His first thought was that the 
dynamite plant at Tom’s River had blown up 
but his intuitive caution led him to see if all 
was well in the house. Putting on his bath robe 
as he went, he noiselessly decended the stairs 
and crept into the parlor. 

There in front of the safe he could see the 
dim form of a man going through his father’s 
papers. Jack regretted that he had come down 
unarmed but he knew that the least delay would 
give the burglar a chance to escape. 

Two quick steps and a little jump landed 
Jack on the safe-blower’s back. The latter 
uttered a guttural cry of rage and then let go 
a string of Spanish cuss-words. Small as he 
was he fought like a wildcat and with a desper- 
ate effort he finally got one hand free and Jack 
caught the gleaming flash of a knife in the air. 

He was too quick for the would-be killer and 
sprang back just in time to miss a vicious thrust 
which, had it reached him, would certainly have 
ended his career. Like a flash Jack took a step 
forward, gauged the distance between his op- 


24 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

ponent’s head and his own foot and with the 
same calculating coolness which the star punter 
of a football team exhibits when in a tight place, 
he gave him a terrific kick full on the point of 
his chin. The knife flew from his nerveless grip 
and the burglar crumpled up on the floor. 

By this time Mr. Heaton had been awakened 
by the noise of the scuffle and he now appeared 
holding a flash-light in one hand and his re- 
volver in the other. 

“What’s the matter, Jack,” he asked anxi- 
ously. 

“Nothing the matter now, Dad, but there 
came mighty nearly being something the mat- 
ter. This rascally greaser was going through 
your safe when I surprised him. Like the cut- 
throat that he is, he drew a knife on me and 
as I was unarmed I was forced to use a trick 
taught me by a French sailor. As you can see, 
it was a good one, for he’s still dead to the 
world. Keep your eye on him and keep him 
covered with your gun while I go to the garage 
and get a rope.” 

Jack reappeared in a few minutes with some 
twenty feet of hemp-rope, a little larger than 
a clothes-line. Before trussing up the fellow 


HEADING SOUTH 


25 


he went through his pockets. From an inside 
one he drew forth a bulky envelope and tossing 
it to his father he said: “That’s yours, Dad.” 

“By gravy,” exclaimed Mr. Heaton in aston- 
ishment, “those are my Mexican Consolidated 
stock certificates. What in thunder do you sup- 
pose the fellow could have wanted with them?” 

“Maybe he thought it was paper money,” 
suggested Jack. 

“Not much chance of that, Jack. Even a 
blind man could tell these certificates from 
greenbacks. Say, son, I wonder if this attempt 
to rob me could have any bearing on my refusal 
to sell these securities to-day. You know I 
told the representative who called on me that 
I was going to hang on to this stock until my 
dying day, let come what may.” 

“That’s just about the size of it, Dad,” 
agreed Jack; “they want your stock bad and 
not being able to get it on a ten per cent basis 
they sent this crook up here to get k for noth- 
ing. Well, my idea of it is that we’ll turn him 
over to the police and he’ll get about ten years 
at hard labor.” 

In the meantime Jack had tied the legs and 
arms of the housebreaker, safe-blower, and, I 


26 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


dare say, it would be perfectly all right to call 
him a horse-thief to boot, securely together. 
This operation had the effect of restoring him 
to consciousness. He jabbered in his native 
tongue, made grimaces with his face and strug- 
gled violently to get loose, but it was no go and 
he lay there on the floor a helpless captive. 

“Pretty sight, isn’t he,” Jack laughed. “I 
wonder how he came by that ugly looking scar 
across his forehead. Wonder if the bad honibre 
who gave it to him was also responsible for 
relieving him of the upper half of his right 
ear. ’ ’ 

So that there might be no commotion in the 
neighborhood — for Montclairites particularly 
dislike anything that in the least savors of 
notoriety — Mr. Heaton asked Jack to go out 
and get the policeman on the beat rather than 
to call up the police station on the ’phone when 
half, or a dozen, reserves would be sent up to 
get the fellow. x 

Jack lost no time in dressing and getting out. 
He was not gone long until he returned with 
one of Montclair’s “finest,” who took the pris- 
oner in charge and snapped a pair of handcuffs 
on his wrists. 


HEADING SOUTH 


27 


4 ‘"Well, Jack, if you are going to El Paso in 
the morning you had better get back to bed 
post-haste/ ’ admonished Mr. Heaton as the 
officer was leading the culprit away. Upon 
hearing the words El Paso the safe-blower gave 
a sneer of satisfaction but neither Mr. Heaton 
nor Jack noticed it. 

“I’ll do that little thing right away, Dad. 
You’d better let me take those certificates over 
to the safe deposit company to-morrow morn- 
ing and put them in a box, where they’ll be per- 
fectly safe. And now ‘good-night’ again, or 
shall I say ‘ good-morning. ’ ” 

Outside the Heaton home the policeman was 
having his own troubles. The Mexican, for 
such the erstwhile prisoner’s swarthy counte- 
nance proclaimed him to be, proved to be a veri- 
table handcuff king. You can imagine Mr. 
Heaton’s surprise and vexation when he tele- 
phoned the next morning to the police station 
and the desk-sergeant informed him that the 
prisoner had slipped his handcuffs and made 
good his escape. How he had managed it the 
policeman in whose custody he was could not 
say, but the Chief-of-Police of Montclair later 
explained to Mr. Heaton “that among profes- 


28 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


sional crooks there are forty known ways to do 
the trick.” 

After a couple of hour’s sleep Jack got up 
without feeling any too much refreshed, but a 
good breakfast brought back his usual pep. 
Then came the time of parting and he said 
an revoir to his father and mother, which in 
French means “ good-by until we meet again,” 
and he was off on his important mission. 

On reaching New York Jack took the stock 
certificates which had so nearly been stolen the 
night before and deposited them in a box in the 
safe deposit company’s vault in the Equitable 
Building. As he passed out through the great 
safe door of the vault he breathed a sigh of 
relief. 

“ There,” he thought, “I’ll bet a dollar to 
a doughnut no Mexican second-story man can 
break in there and get them.” 

On arriving at the Pennsylvania Station at 
ten-thirty, or thereabouts, he found Bill on 
hand waiting for him. They were an oddly 
diversified pair, were Jack and his pal Bill. To 
the casual observer the former might easily 
have been taken for some rich New Yorker’s 


HEADING SOUTH 


29 

son traveling for pleasure, while Bill was, in 
the vernacular, “a hard looking guy.” 

With some mental reservations, though, he 
could have passed as Jack’s valet or, more 
aptly, a slugger sent along to look after the 
physical welfare of the young man he accom- 
panied. But you and I know differently and 
I think you will agree with me that Jack was 
pretty well able to take care of himself under 
any and all circumstances. 

A few minutes later they were aboard the 
Pennsylania Limited and comfortably settled 
in their Pullman. The heavy all steel train 
pulled out at precisely ten-fifty and after pass- 
ing through the tunnel under the Hudson River 
they were soon headed south at the rate of 
sixty miles an hour. 

As they stood on the observation platform 
Jack told Bill of the events of the previous 
night. As to the episode of the knife Bill said 
that his only wonder was that he (Jack) hadn’t 
found another one in his boot-leg or in a shoul- 
der-sheath. 

“Most greasers,” he continued, “carry a 
couple and sometimes three knives and they 
are certainly wizards when it comes to usin’ 


30 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

them. Why, I’ve seen one greaser pin another 
to a hitchin’-post and him fifty-feet away at 
that. Now let’s have yonr plans, Jack.” 

“I haven’t got any more plans than a rab- 
bit, Bill. The way I’ve got it doped out is that 
we’ll go to El Paso; there we’ll buy a couple 
of good horses and an outfit and cross over into 
Chihuahua. We’ll claim that we’re prospectors 
and I guess we can bluff our way through on 
that basis. Just what we’ll do after that I 
haven’t the faintest idea. I’ve got a hunch, 
though, that as soon as we’re on the actual 
ground, that is to say, in the oil fields owned 
by the Mexican Consolidated , we’ll be able to 
ferret out just what kind of fifty-seven varieties 
of crooked business is going on. Let’s go on 
ahead to the dining car and chow , as we used 
to say in the army; what do you say?” 

4 4 Lead me to it, friend. As the hobo says 
when he asks for a handout, 4 lady, will you 
kindly give me a drink of water, I ’m so hungry 
I don’t know where I’m going to sleep to- 
night.’ ” 

After a hearty meal the two war-time pals 
retraced their steps through the parlor and 
sleeping cars back toward the observation car. 


HEADING SOUTH 


3i 


As they were passing through one of the cars 
Bill's sporting eye caught a friendh game of 
cards in progress in one of the smoking com- 
partments and he and Jack stopped to watch 
the play. 

They stepped inside where they could see and 
follow the hands as they were dealt by the four 
fat, genial and prosperous-looking traveling 
men. The game interested J ack for a while but 
he presently grew tired of it and absently 
glanced into a mirror fitted in a door in the 
compartment. Seated back of him was a 
swarthy short man, neatly dressed but who, 
Jack observed, was watching him like a hawk. 

Jack took to watching the stranger, for there 
was something familiar about the fellow's face. 
From his point of vantage he could catch only 
the man's profile and he wanted to see his full 
face. Fortune was with him, for just then a 
man came in, the train lurched to one side and 
the newcomer's elbow grabbed the top of the 
swarthy man's head, knocking his hat to one 
side. 

Jack could not restrain a mild cry of sur- 
prise, for the unexpected mishap disclosed a 
livid scar running across the fellow's forehead 


32 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

as well as* that half of his right ear had been 
shorn away. It was no other person than the 
safe-blower of the night before, whom Jack had 
believed was safely incarcerated in the Mont- 
clair limbo. 

At Jack’s outcry the Mexican realized that 
he had been recognized and darted from the 
compartment before either Jack or Bill could 
stop him and without waiting to recover his 
hat. Jack tore after him and managed to keep 
him in sight through a couple of cars but in 
the third one he met defeat. A dusky-hued 
porter was coming up the aisle with a step- 
ladder in his hand. The Mexican dodged him 
but when it was Jack’s turn the clumsy negro 
swung around the other way, the ladder caught 
Jack neatly on the shins, and tripped him up 
much to his own wrath and the delight of the 
passengers. 

By the time he had cleared himself of the 
ladder and the porter and listened to the lat- 
ter’s scared apology, “no ’fense, boss, no ’fense, 
boss,” the rascal had disappeared as com- 
pletely as if he had never been on the train. 
Together Jack and Bill went to the Pullman 


HEADING SOUTH 


33 

conductor and demanded that a search he made 
of the train and the man arrested. 

“ Sorry, fellows, but it can’t he done,” re- 
plied that worthy official, 4 1 the only thing I can 
do is to wire on a description of the missing 
gent to the Harrisburg police when we reach 
the next stop and have them nab him when we 
get there.” 

“Say, Bill, that thug heard Dad say I was 
leaving for El Paso to-day. Now what the dick- 
ens do you suppose he’s doing on this train? 
He either thinks I’ve got the certificates or else 
he wants to get me! It looks to me aL if we 
are going to have trouble before we get across 
the Rio Grande.” 

“You know I was always peace-lovin’, Jack,” 
vouchsafed Bill in his quiet, docile way. “It 
gen ’ally takes two to make sure enough trou- 
ble and you’ll always find that I’m an accessory 
before the fact, as a Harlem lawyer would say, 
so count me in on the fun if there’s going to be 
any. Seel” 


CHAPTER in 


BAD HOMBRE FROM CHILILI 


LTHOUGH three plain-clothes men of 



jL \ . the Harrisburg police force searched the 
train thoroughly at the latter stop while the 
engines were being changed, and others were on 
the look-out around it, no trace was found of 
the man with the scar on his forehead and whose 
ear had been lopped off. The boys concluded 
that when he saw Jack he had hidden some- 
where on the train and dropped off the first 
time it slowed down. 

Not to be caught napping though, Jack and 
Bill kept a sharp lookout for him all the rest 
of the trip. At noon the next day the Limited 
crossed the great Eads bridge over the Missis- 
sippi River at St. Louis and after running 
under the city through a tunnel it pulled into 
the Union Station — something of a wonder in 
itself, since more railroads meet there than at 
any other station in the world. 


BAD HOMBRE FROM CHILILI 35 

There the train of Pullmans was broken up, 
the cars switched around and new trains made 
up, one going north to St. Paul, another south 
to New Orleans, still another to San Francisco, 
and their own to El Paso and other Texan 1 
points. 

The rest of their trip through Missouri and 
Oklahoma, which latter state was formerly In- 
dian Territory, and Texas was without further 
incident or excitement. The change of climate, 
however, was distinctly agreeable, for the blasts 
of winter had gradually been tempered by that 
vast and important warm ocean-current which 
comes out of the Gulf of Mexico, where it raises 
the temperature of the southern states imtil 
the weather is as salubrious in January as that 
of a June day in the north — only more so. 

The ride across western Texas back of oil- 
burning locomotives was long, hot and dusty 
and in consequence it seemed well-nigh in- 
terminable. Towns were mighty few and far 
between and when the Rio Pecos, which has its 
source somewhere up in Colorado, flows down 
through New Mexico and empties into the Rio 
Grande, was reached it was a pleasant sight 


36 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

to see by way of contrast with the semi-desert 
country which they were crossing. 

Early in the evening of the following day 
the train pulled into El Paso, a town of fair 
size, as southwestern towns go, in the extreme 
western peak of the Lone Star State , as Texas 
is called. Here, too, Texas and Old Mexico 
come together, but never the twain shall meet 
except that it be to exchange a few bullets. 

Jack and Bill were right glad to end this leg 
of their journey and get out and breathe the 
pure air which has not yet been contaminated 
by subways and sky-scrapers. In a word, El 
Paso looked good to them. 

It is a town of about twelve thousand people 
and this population is made up of white folks, 
Mexicans, Indians, half-breeds, Chinamen, cow- 
boys, gamblers and all the accouterments of a 
wide-open frontier town. It is connected with 
Juarez,* or El Paso del Norte , as it was for- 
merly called, which means in Spanish “the pass 
to the north/ ’ by means of a bridge. It was 
so named by Juan de Onate, a Spanish explorer, 
way back in 1598. In due course of human 
events, that is to say, nearly three hundred 


* Pronounced War'-es. 


BAD HOMBRE FROM CHILILI 37 

years later, it came to be the headquarters for 
cattle raisers and silver miners from the south 
and a refuge for consumptives from the north. 

The boys put up at El Hotel Estrella Solo, 
which done into plain American is The Lone 
Star Hotel, that night. In the morning they 
paid their respects to the Mexican Consul, ex- 
plained to him that they were going into Mexico 
to prospect for oil, were capable of taking care 
of themselves and meant no harm to any one. 
Sehor Alarcon viseed their passports, which 
they had failed to have done in New York, and 
he explained to them that as long as they 
attended to their own business and did not run 
into any bandits or bands of guerrillas they 
were perfectly safe. 

The Consul further pointed out that Mexico 
was divided against herself by many factions ; 
that the present government under President 
Carranza was making every effort to suppress 
the bandits and revolutionists, and to protect 
American citizens, but that under existing con- 
ditions it was a very difficult thing to do. All 
in all, the Consul was so suave, smooth and oily 
that Bill took an instant dislike to him. 


38 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

“Nice chap, that Senor Alarcon/ ’ remarked 
Jack, when they got ontside. 

“That’s the trouble, he’s too nice,” insisted 
Bill querulously. “Sure they’re doing all they 
can to protect Americans. Look at all the mur- 
ders, hold-ups, and kidnapin’ that’s been goin’ 
on in the last year. Right now Jenkins, our 
American Consul, who was kidnaped by 
bandits and ransomed, has been arrested by 
the Carranza government and thrown in jail on 
the charge that he was in on the divvy with the 
bandits. 

“The whole trouble with these greasers is 
that they think they are fooling Uncle Sam. 
But take it from me, Buddy, they are going to 
wake up some morning and find they have an- 
other think coming and when they do you and 
me will be right in the vanguard.” 

“You said it,” Jack made reply. “Well let’s 
go over to Juarez and oufit there. We ought 
to pick up a couple of fair to middling riding 
horses there cheap.” 

The boys went back to their hotel, got their 
suit-cases and jumped into a jitney. As they 
were going over the International Bridge, 
which connects the two towns, they were im- 


BAD HOMBRE FROM CHILILI 39 

peded in their progress by a large herd of 
cattle that half a dozen vaqueros, or Mexican 
cowboys, were driving over. With their 
splendid half-wild cow-ponies, showy saddles 
studded with silver nails, their huge sombreros 
and gorgeously colored zarapes, they were in- 
deed a sight to behold. 

Like all of the Latin races, the Mexicans have 
an inordinate love for finery. Velvet jackets 
and trousers and riding boots embroidered 
with silver and gold threads are the rule down 
there rather than the exception. Then came 
the opposite extreme in the shape of some 
peons , who are the poor laboring people of 
Mexico • they were almost devoid of clothes and 
each one was driving a burro^ or two which car- 
ried a bundle of faggots on either side of its 
back. It looked as if time had slipped a cog 
and turned back to the period when Texas was 
a part of Mexico. 

Once across the bridge the suit-cases of the 
boys were examined by the Mexican customs 
officials and with much talking and very little 
looking they pasted a stamp on each one to 
show that no contraband goods were contained 
therein and passed them on. If they had dis- 


40 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

covered the arsenal under Jack and BilPs 
clothes things might have been different. 

They put np at a little adobe inn that looked 
as if it might be something more but certainly 
nothing less than a thousand years old. It was 
directly across from the old bull-ring where in 
the palmy days of Mexico, that is to say, when 
the country was ruled by the iron hand of 
Diaz, bull-fights were the national sport. 

Juarez was first established as a military post 
to check the inroads of savage tribes of Indians 
which ravaged the whole north of the country 
even as the more savage bandits do now. The 
muddy Rio Grande, which in time past fre- 
quently overflowed its banks, has made the val- 
ley very fertile and fields of alfalfa and maize 
grow amazingly well, while the surrounding 
country is dotted with splendid gardens and 
orchards that produce the most delicious fruits. 

Jack and Bill made a survey of the town in 
quest of a suitable outfit. They learned that 
an auction sale of horses was going to take 
place that very morning in the plaza , as the 
public square is called. Accordingly they 
turned their steps in that direction and a short 
walk brought them to the horse-mart. 


BAD HOMBRE FROM CHILILI 41 

On one side there were crowded into an im- 
provised corral some twenty or more horses 
and the auctioneer, who was either a private 
stock-raiser or else a rustler , would rope one 
of them, lead it from the corral and then the 
bidding would begin. It was very spirited, for 
the Mexicans dearly love anything in which the 
element of chance is present. All through the 
republic you will hear everybody from the high- 
est official down to the lowest peon tell what he 
is going to do when he wins the capital prize in 
the National lottery. The prospective buyers 
of a horse would look at its teeth, and, if it was 
not too wild and vicious, at its hoofs and size 
it up in general. 

After a couple of sales had been made the 
auctioneer led forth from the corral a beauti- 
ful pinto , that is, a horse which is sometimes 
white with a big spot, often black, on its side, 
like a fox terrier. Pretty as he was it was quite 
clear from his antics that a saddle had never 
touched his back. As most of the buyers were 
looking for saddle broken animals there were 
few bids and as Bill was not so particular he 
had small trouble in buying him for a ridicu- 
lously low sum. 


42 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

After a few more horses had been put up and 
sold the auctioneer brought forth a blue roan 
which, although a little scraggy, was, judging 
from its deep withers, which showed that it had 
big lungs and hence good wind, a speedy ani- 
mal and full of endurance. This roan suited 
Jack’s fancy to a T and he bought it. 

As there were still some eight or ten more 
animals to he sold the boys left their mounts 
in the corral and set out for a saddler’s shop a 
few blocks away, to which the auctioneer had 
directed them. 

“I hopes as how he doesn’t sell our horses 
over again as soon as we’re out of ear-shot,” 
thought Bill out loud. 

“That would be a calamity,” said Jack; 
well, we’ll have to take a chance and believe 
he’s more honest than a Florida land shark.” 

Bill bought a regulation McClellan army sad- 
dle, a blanket, a curb-bit and bridle, a pair of 
silver mounted spurs with big rowels a la Mexi- 
can style. Jack, who never cared much for an 
army saddle, bought instead a stock saddle with 
a high pommel and cantle. Carrying their out- 
fits under their arms they went back to the 
corral. By this time the auctioneer had sold 


/ 


BAD HOMBRE FROM CHILILI 43 

the remaining horses and the corral was empty. 
Seeing that Bill was about to ride the outlaw 
horse, the few hangers-on lingered longer, hop- 
ing that the Americano would be thrown and 
trampled on. 

They eagerly watched Bill tie the pinto as 
short as he could over to the corral fence with 
the halter rope. Then he got a feed sack and 
Jack held it over the outlaw’s eyes. Bill lost 
no time in folding a blanket and gingerly placed 
it on the pinto’s back; over his left arm he car- 
ried his saddle, which he just as gently set on 
the blanket. Even with all this kindness the 
outlaw no sooner felt the weight of the saddle 
than he promptly bucked it off, much to the 
delight of the wild and wooly spectators who 
howled and hooted with derisive joy. 

What with the horse and the Mexican’s bully- 
ragging him, Bill was getting hot under the 
collar and a deep flush had crept up his neck 
and colored his face until he looked like a boiled 
beet. Jack could see by the way his chin stuck 
out that he was determined to ride the horse if 
only to fool the greasers who wished him bad 
luck. 

It took several attempts and much patience 


44 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

to get the saddle on the animal’s back, cinch it 
up and bridle him. In the meantime the pinto 
had worked himself up into a fine frenzy by 
virtue of this unaccustomed treatment and the 
hurt which had been done to his pride by tying 
this strange contraption to his back. 

Some people have the idea that horses don’t 
think, but if you’ve ever tried to ride an out- 
law you’d know they do. Exactly what they 
think is hard to say because, since they 
have horse-sense, they naturally think horse 
thoughts. 

Having finally succeeded in saddling and 
bridling him, Jack untied him and led him to 
tfye center of the corral. Bill donned his spurs 
and followed. After a spell of spasmodic buck- 
ing, which failed to dislodge the saddle, the 
pinto quieted down as if to wait to see what new 
indignity was to be heaped upon him. 

Approaching him from the near side, as the 
left side is called, Bill very gently put his left 
foot into the stirrup; then he grasped the reins 
up close to the bit and pulled the horse’s head 
around until he could lock his fingers in his 
mane. Jack still hung on to the halter rope 
and Bill easily swung his right leg over the 


BAD HOMBRE FROM CHILILI 45 

saddle and gently lowered himself into the seat. 

“All right, Jack, let ’er buck!” Bill yelled, 
and his pal let the halter rope go, leaving the 
pinto free to bnck his rider off if he could. 

For a second both rider and horse remained 
as still as if they had been chiseled from a 
block of marble, hut it was only for a second. 
Then the little “hawse” snorted, pawed the 
ground with a wild look of vengeance in his eye 
and reared up on his hind legs ; like a whirling 
Dervish he turned round and round, hut this 
was because Bill had taken the precaution to 
get a close-up grip on the reins. From the 
crowd came a cry, “The" Americano is afraid 
to give the horse his head!” 

This taunt was too much for Bill and he 
gradually lengthened his hold on the reins. 
The pinto slowly straightened his head up and 
then, finding himself free for the first time, he 
quickly took advantage of the liberty given 
him, lowered his head between his forelegs and 
went off like fireworks, bucking and rearing for 
all he was worth. 

As Jack watched his pal stick to that horse 
he never would have believed that this Harlem 
boy of the gas-house district was not a born 


46 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

frontiersman had he not known his history. 
But then, William S. Hart was horn in New- 
burgh, N. Y., so you never can tell. 

Bill, who was just as much at home on a buck- 
ing broncho as he was on a submarine chaser 
or a U-boat, had locked the rowels of his spurs 
into the cinch strap — an old cowboy trick — and 
as a result he was, to all intents and purposes, 
glued to the saddle, as Jack afterward said in 
telling me the story. 

“I’ll say that those greasers never saw rid- 
ing before that could come up to it,” he added; 
“why you couldn’t have slipped a cigarette 
paper between Bill and the saddle, he hugged 
it so tight.” 

Finding that he could not buck his tenacious 
rider off, the pinto tried another stunt that he 
calculated would put his owner to the bad and 
that was to scrape his legs off against the sides 
of the corral. Bill, though, was wise, to all the 
tricks of a bucking broncho, so every time the 
“hawse” tried to brush up against the fence 
he would dig his spurs into him unmercifully 
on that side. 

Balked in this star attempt to do his rider 
to death he tried a new tactic and that was to 


BAD HOMBRE FROM CHILILI 47 

lay down and roll over on him. The pinto did 
this so suddenly that he thought he had suc- 
ceeded, but Bill had nimbly slipped out of the 
saddle. His horsed joy was short lived, for as 
he jumped to his feet he again felt the weight 
of the rider, the detestable pressure of his knees 
and the cruel prick of the spurs in his flanks. 

A few more half-hearted bucks and Mr. Pinto 
gave up trying to break his rider’s mastery and 
he stood trembling like a leaf. Prof. William 
Adams, of the genus homo-sapiens, which 
means nimble-witted man, patted his pinto on 
the neck and was declared the conqueror. Bill 
trotted him around the corral a couple of times, 
dismounted and held out a lump of sugar. The 
horse whinnied, sniffed of it and then accepted 
and ate the gift. From that time on horse and 
master were the best of friends. 

Quite early in the performance the Mexicans 
who were looking on had come to the conclusion 
that the hated Americano was not going to 
be thrown and trampled on by the broncho and 
so, when they saw that the horse was broken, 
they gradually slunk away, and Bill and Jack 
were left alone. 

Having broken the pmto, Jack saddled his 


48 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

own horse and they spent the rest of the after- 
noon riding around getting an outfit. Among 
the things they bought that were indispensable 
accessories) to every prospector’s equipment 
was a pack-mule and a pack-saddle. They also 
invested in a tarpaulin for use as a shelter, 
some rock drills, a cooking outfit, grub and, last 
but by no means least, Jack insisted on buying 
several sticks of dynamite and a blasting ma- 
chine. The latter is really a little dynamo 
which generates an electric current when you 
push down on the handle. 

Finally, to complete the outfit he got a box 
of electric blasting caps and some flexible con- 
necting wire. A blasting cap is made of a cop- 
per shell with two leading-in wires cemented 
in it and these are connected with a very fine 
wire. The cap is then filled with a charge of 
powder and the ends sealed up. 

To explode a stick of dynamite the cap is set 
in the end of it and the leading-in wires are 
connected with the blasting machine. Now, 
when you push down on the handle of the ma- 
chine, the latter generates a current; this heats 
the fine wdre bridge in the cap and fires the gun- 


BAD HOMBRE FROM CHILILI 49 

powder which in turn explodes the dynamite by 
percussion , that is to say, by shock. 

To Bill’s questions regarding this seemingly 
useless piece of paraphernalia Jack replied that 
while it would in all probability prove to be of 
no value, he was buying it on a hunch. Just 
how good his hunch was we shall presently see. 
That evening Bill taught Jack how to pack the 
outfit on the mule properly and to throw a 
double diamond hitch, which, as every prospec- 
tor knows, takes two men to do the job right. 

Then they returned to their inn, a quaint lit- 
tle place and an excellent example of Spanish- 
Indian architecture of the southwest. Built of 
sun-baked blocks of mud, or ’dobe, it stood two 
stories high and looked as if it might have been 
there when Juan de Onate discovered the 
place. The front, which was open, served as 
a cafe and dining-room, while in the center of 
the building there was the courtyard, or patio, 
so dear to the heart of the Mexican. 

Around and off from the courtyard the sleep- 
ing rooms of the proprietor opened, while on 
the second floor were the guest rooms — at least 
that is where most of those who slept there did 
their guessing. The floors were of tile, which 


50 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

at any rate are sanitary, the walls were white- 
washed and the only articles of furniture werd 
the beds, a couple of chairs and a table, all of 
which was probably premeditated, as the fewer 
things in the room the less use the bugs have 
for it. 

After a hearty dinner of chili con came y 
frijoles, cafe con leche y pan, which simply 
means chili with meat and beans, coffee with 
milk, and bread, the boys went to their room 
and to bed, for they wanted to make an early 
start the next morning. 

As dawn was breaking Jack and Bill donned 
their riding breeches, boots, six-guns and som- 
breros. The transformation was as wonderful 
as it was complete. On the previous day Jack 
had looked like a prosperous and aggressive 
young business man, while Bill looked like a 
blacksmith's apprentice all dressed up in store 
clothes. Now both of them assumed the aspect 
of bom and bred prospectors. 

They had a ride of some two hundred miles 
before them and they were right glad to get 
started for they were champing at their bits in 
their eagerness to get into action. Bill, who 
needed the rest-cure, was getting it, for his 


BAD HOMBRE FROM CHILILI 51 

pinto had to be rebroken every time be mounted 
him, although bis displays now were those of 
temperament rather than of temper. 

The boys headed south toward the Sierra 
Madre range of mountains and they soon lost 
sight of Juarez and its little ’dobe buildings. 
Jack took the lead and Bill brought up in the 
rear leading the pack-mule. Handicapped with 
the latter beast of burden the best they could 
do was to keep to a brisk trot, although it was 
clear that both horses would have preferred the 
gallop. 

At noon they stopped along the trail and 
threw together a little bite to eat. Then they 
picketed their horses and rested for a couple 
of hours in the scant shade of a giant cactus 
from the heat of the scorching midday sun. 
Greatly refreshed by their siesta , they con- 
tinued their way along a fairly well beaten trail. 
After they had jogged along for some ten miles 
Jack sighted a tiny cloud of dust far away 
above the mesquite bushes, and as it kept grow- 
ing larger and clearer he proclaimed it to be 
a lone horseman coming toward them on the 
dead gallop. 

A few minutes later the man on horseback 


52 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

was plainly visible. Neither J ack nor Bill could 
see the need for such great haste, but they 
quickly found out, for, as he came up at break- 
neck speed, he wheeled his horse up in front 
of them, drew a revolver and leveling it at 
Jack’s head, cried, “monos altos! (hands up) 
pronto!” (quickly). 

Realizing that the bandit had the drop on 
them they complied without any loss of time to 
his wishes. He then told them to dismount. 

“Say cull, who are you anyway ?” asked Bill 
without caring a whole lot. 

“Never you min’ who me be,” the greaser re- 
torted in bad English. “Sometimes I be call 
Bad Hombre from Chilili . Joost now I be 
ready to rob the Americano. Better it is you 
get off the horse pronto. Maybe I keel you. 
Quien sabe!” With that he grinned diaboli- 
cally, showing his dirty yellow teeth. 

Bill slipped reluctantly to the ground, but 
Jack was doing a stroke of quick thinking. As 
he had always said, his brain worked better 
when he was in danger than at any other time. 

As he swung out of the saddle he drew his 
revolver with lightning-like rapidity. Followed 
two reports almost simultaneously and Jack’s 


BAD HOMBRE FROM CHILILI 53 

sombrero jumped from his head. The greaser 
slid slowly out of his saddle, fell to the ground 
with a guttural cry and lay there as still as a 
dead ’possum. 

“For the love of Mike,” exclaimed Bill with 
downright admiration, “I never knew you was 
a gun-man before Jack. You sure caught that 
bird neat. * Are you hurt?” 

“He never touched me, but he’s ruined my 
new nine-dollar Stetson Jack complained, re- 
trieving the bullet-pierced headgear from the 
dust and poking his finger into a jagged hole 
in the crown. 

“Well, from now on, all I’ve got to say is 
that you’re the Bad H ombre from Chilili in the 
original package,” quoth Bill. 


CHAPTER IV 


4 ‘elevate and donate!” 

T HE boys picked up the hold-up man’s re- 
volver and relieved him of the other one 
and his knife. Having corralled his arsenal, 
Bill examined him for his hurt and found that 
Jack had only slightly wounded him, the bullet 
merely going through the fleshy part of his 
shoulder. 

“I’m mighty glad I didn’t puncture him any 
worse,” said Jack, “because if I had there’s no 
telling what the outcome would be.” 

“One less murderous greaser in the world 
wouldn’t matter,” admitted Bill. 

The Bad H ombre of Chilili had come to and 
Bill plugged his handkerchief into the bleeding 
wound and tied his arm up in a sling, which, 
according to the code prevailing in those parts, 
was first-rate first-aid to the injured. The 
bandit sat quite still while he was propped up 
against a mesquite bush, but neither the pain 
54 


“ELEVATE AND DONATE!” 55 

of his wound nor Bill’s Red Cross attentions 
were severe enongh to prevent him from flu- 
ently cussing Jack like a Spanish trooper. 

The young prospector was disposed to pay 
no attention to him for a while, hut finally he 
got tired of the abuse and gently remonstrated 
with the bad man. 

“That will be about all for this time, ,, Jack 
growled at him; “close your face or I’ll bore a 
hole in your other shoulder so that you’ll have 
something to cuss about. Why, you ought to be 
glad you’re alive and kicking.” 

The bandit sullenly subsided and with the 
help of the hated Americanos he raised himself 
slowly to his feet and with no small effort man- 
aged to mount his horse. 

“Por Dios! the Americano pigs will never 
live to reach the oil fields, ’ ’ he shouted in rage, 
and with that he put spurs to his horse and was 
away at a dead gallop for Juarez. 

“How in thunder did that bird know we are 
headed for the oil fields?” asked Bill, greatly 
perplexed. 

“According to my way of figuring that’s 
about as easy as adding* two and two on an 
adding machine,” returned Jack. “I’ll bet 


56 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

that safe-blowing greaser on the train never 
got off at all and that right now he’s in 
Juarez.” 

4 'This Bad H ombre, as he calls hisself, isn’t 
the same bird that blew your Dad’s safe, is 
he? I didn’t notice whether he had a scar on 
his forehead or was minus an ear.” 

"No, he’s a different fellow entirely, but you 
can take it from me he’s of the same stripe. 
It’s ten to one, though, the Mexican I saw on 
the train is in cahoots with or has hired this 
Bad H ombre to settle our hash and keep us 
from reaching our destination. I tell you, Bill, 
there’s something as crooked as a bent cork- 
screw in this oil proposition. I’m glad I Ringed 
that fellow now, for maybe it will teach him 
that we’re not to be fooled with.” 

"You’re dead right,” agreed his pal; "these 
greasers are the biggest cowards on this old 
mud ball of ours. They all depend on ambush, 
surprise and other underhand tricks to carry 
them through. From now on we’re going to 
have a royal time of it, and you can lay to that, ’ ’ 
he chuckled. 

‘ ‘ This was the time old Chilili ambushed him- 
self,” laughed Jack. "We may have a royal 


ELEVATE AND DONATE! 


57 


time as yon say, Bill, but we’re going to have 
our hands full, that I can plainly see. We’ve 
got to he on the qui vive ” 

“Whatever that may be,” broke in Bill. 
“From now on every second of the time day 
and night or we’ll get hamstrung or something 
worse,” Jack went on, paying no attention to 
Bill’s interruption. 

As dusk was coming on the boys strung up 
their tarpaulin, picketed their horses and set 
about getting their evening meal. They were 
very hungry and went to it with great gusto. 
Having satisfied the inner man, they lay back 
at their ease with right good will and talked 
over the queer turn that events had taken and 
framed up their plans for the morrow. 

The temperature of the evening proved to be 
the opposite of that during the day, for when 
the sun went down the scorching heat on the 
alkali earth subsided and as night wore on it 
grew quite cool. There is very little twilight 
in semi-tropical countries and, hence, the grada^- 
tions of light are not as pronounced as they 
are in northern climes; the result is that al- 
most as soon as the sun sets it begins to get 
dark. The boys built a cheery little fire of dead 


58 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

mesquite bushes and its warmth proved very 
acceptable to them in the desert night. 

Sitting ’round the cheery camp tire called to 
Bill’s mind many another evening when he had 
had the same experience down on the border, 
and he was moved by its gleaming flames and 
glowing embers to tell a story. 

4 4 The way these greasers work things puts 
me in mind of a bit of trouble me and my 
buddy, Longhorn Whittaker, had down here on 
the border,” he began, looking straight into 
the fire. 4 4 That was something like six years 
ago and me and Longhorn, as he calls his self, 
as a couple of kids was ambitious and aspirin’ 
to become a pair o’ cattle-kings and was run- 
nin’ our cattle on a free range over in Sonora, 
about six hundred miles east of here. 

4 4 We had a small ranch shack which cost us 
a lot o’ money, maybe as much as two hundred 
dollars, and more hard work than I cares to 
recollect. Best of all, though, we had the only 
dependable waterin’ hole in the country, all the 
others bein’ uncertain even in the wet season 
and sure to disappear in the dry season. Ad- 
joinin’ our rancho was the rancho of one Senor 

Fernando Gomez, cattle baron of Senora, and 

7 + 7 


“ELEVATE AND DONATE!” 


59 


as mean a looking dried-up, devil-may-care a 
greaser as you ever saw. The first time I sees 
him I takes a violent dislike to his physog, 
which resembles the map of Mexico, and Long- 
horn agrees on both points. 

“ Comes the. dry season and it’s hotter ’n 
hades, and our waterin’ hole is the only oasis 
within a range as far as men can ride in sad- 
dles. Also comes this palaverin’ little greaser , 
Gomez. ‘Senors,’ he whines as if he’s all in, 
‘my cattle they are die with great thirst. Unless 
you are great, good Americanos and let them 
drink at your spring I am ruin’.’ 

“ ‘How about it?’ I asks Longhorn. 

‘ ‘ ‘ Shore, ’ says he with his big heart ; ‘ I^guess 
there’s water enough for both of us. Tell him 
to go ahead.’ 

“Senor Gomez calls us his saviors and the 
old sugar-eatin’ coyote goes away with tears 
in his eyes. From that time on he waters his 
cattle at our spring, but we never gets even 
a pleasant look, much less a thank-you. 

“Then one fine momin’ we drives our cattle 
down to water and finds our water-hole neatly 
fenced in and a sign on it which asserts that 
‘this bein’ a free range and Senor Gomez havin’ 


6o JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


watered his cattle at the spring for some time 
previous, and him havin’ legally filed on said 
spring, the government assigns to said party 
the sole right, title and interest in and owner- 
ship to the aforesaid spring for a period of five 
years, ’ or words which mean the same. 

“ Longhorn has to read the sign several times 
before the low-down trick sinks into his bean, 
and then he gets rid of a choice lot of words 
that the New York Times would refuse to take 
as news. 

“Next thing I knows and he rips the notice 
offen the fence and a vaqwero sitting on the op- 
posite side with a Winchester acrost his knees 
punctures his sombrero for him an’ says he’ll 
do the same for his waistcoat if he offers fur- 
ther injury to Senor Gomez ’s property. Long- 
horn is a sure enough hard-boiled egg Tor a 
young feller, but he doesn’t say a word and 
walks away with a smile which doesn’t mean 
that he’s pleased. So you see that these 
greasers ain’t to be trusted except when you’ve 
pointed the toes of their boots skyward.” 

“You never spoke a truer word, Bill. But 
what happened to you and your pal, Long- 
horn?” asked Jack. 


ELEVATE AND DONATE! 


61 


“Oh, yes, I forgot to mention,” added Bill 
with some show of sorrow in his voice, “that 
evening’ as I rides up to the rancho I sees some- 
thin J hangin’ in the doorway of our shack and 
on closer investigation I discovers that it re- 
sembles a human bein\ On turnin’ it around 
I sees as how it had been hangin’ there for quite 
some time and nat ’rally he’s of no more account 
on this earth. Pinned to his shirt is a note 
which reads : 

“ ‘Deer Bill and Pardner. Failin’ to see any 
loophole outen this orful mess i takes the easi- 
est way and has a little necktye party all by my 
lonesome at the expense of our deer friend 
here, Senor Gomez. Consekintly I’m leavin’ 
pronto for parts unknown. The cattle is all 
yourn. So good-by. Longhorn.’ 

“On readin’ this I was about as comfortable 
as the backbone of a disheartened mule, but 
as I said before, Longhorn was a hard-boiled 

egg. 

“Well,” finished Bill, “I guess I’ll turn in.” 

“But how did you get out?” Jack asked him. 

“Who, me? Oh, I got out of Sonora with 
the Mexican rurales just one jump behind me.” 


62 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


With that Bill rolled himself up in his blanket 
and Jack stood the first watch. 

They had agreed that in this fair land, where 
nature had been so lavish with her gifts of 
silver and gems and oil and whose inhabitants 
were so terribly hostile toward the people of 
the friendly nation to the north, it would not 
do for both of them to sleep at the same time. 
So four hours on and four hours off duty was 
the self-imposed rule they were to live by dur- 
ing their nights in Mexico. 

Although Jack had rather expected the Bad 
H ombre to report his defeat in Juarez and to 
head an armed force to pursue them, things 
were as quiet as Wall Street on a Sunday morn- 
ing. In four hours to the mir ate he woke Bill 
up and then went to sleep himself. BilPs four- 
hour trick went more quickly, for he busied 
himself the last hour by getting breakfast. 
When all was ready he called Jack, likewise to 
the minute, and they had their bacon and bread 
and coffee. It tasted immense and they did full 
justice to it. The meal over, they broke camp 
and jogged along their way southward again. 

Along about noon the trail closed in and ran 
alongside of the Mexico and Northwestern 


“ELEVATE AND DONATE !” 63 

Railway tracks. They followed it for some dis- 
tance, when there appeared on the horizon a 
town which, it was evident, was on the railroad. 

J ack was not at all superstitions, but he often 
got what is popularly called a hunch , that is, 
a presentiment, and all morning he felt in his 
bones that they were going to run into trouble 
before the day was over unless they devised a 
way to escape it. And they do say down in 
Mexico that “he who thinks of trouble will 
surely get into it.” 

After what the Bad H ombre of Chilili had 
said about their “never reaching the oil fields” 
J ack didn ’t need to be the seventh son of a sev- 
enth son to know that the man with the scar 
on his forehead and his ear neatly amputated 
was in reality one of the leaders of the gang of 
oil crooks who was trying to rob his father and, 
doubtless, all of the other American stock- 
holders out of their holdings. 

That Senor Lopear, as Jack called him for 
want of his real name, was in Juarez, at Ter- 
razas, where the oil fields are located and which 
they were bound for, or somewhere .between 
these chief points, Jack hadn’t the slightest 
doubt. Further, it seemed more than probable 


64 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

that he had either proceeded or else followed 
them into Mexico for the express purpose of 
preventing them from learning at first hand 
the truth about the condition of the Mexican 
Consolidated Oil Company , Ltd . 

Since they had not been molested the night 
before he felt all the more certain that the 
enemy would attack them that night, and this 
time, he reasoned, it would be in force. So as 
they rode serenely along Jack did a little stroke 
of thinking to the end that they might throw 
the bandits wdio were following them off of 
their trail — a mighty hard thing to do in a dis- 
trict where most of the Mexicans live by the 
allied crimes of robbery and murder. 

“ I’ve got an idea, Bill,” he said seriously 
as one who had concocted a great scheme. 

“Give it to me and I T1 eat it,” replied Bill 
jocosely, but who in reality was as hungry as 
an ostrich. 

“No kidding about this idea. IVe had a 
hunch all morning that we’re scheduled to run 
into trouble to-night and the chances are that 
instead of having to match up with one we’ll 
have to contend with half a dozen of these half- 
breeds or even more. 


“ELEVATE AND DONATE!” 65 

‘ ‘It’s easy to see, isn’t it, from the run-in we 
had yesterday with the Bad H ombre that old 
Lopear must be pretty well informed of our 
moves, and that he’ll know just where to find 
us to-night and attack us unless we outwit 
him. ’ ’ 

“Fine idea, Jack,” agreed Bill, “but if old 
Lopear is as well informed as you give him 
credit for, how can we hope to fool him?” 

“That’s where my big idea comes in. We’ll 
make a wide detour of this town we’re coming 
to so that we won’t be seen. Then we’ll hit 
the trail again and skirt the railroad for, say, 
four or five miles and picket our animals in 
some well hidden spot. This done, we’ll walk 
back to town. There will be, most likely, a train 
coming through sometime to-night and we’ll 
board her. 

“Lopear will learn from his spies that we 
have discarded our horses, which would be the 
most natural thing in the world for us to do, 
and taken the train on south. This move on 
our part will, if I am not very much mistaken, 
upset any plan of his to ‘get us’ to-night. 

‘ ‘ When we ’ve reached the place where we ’ve 
picketed our horses, we ’ll drop off of the train. 


66 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


Then we’ll bivouac for the night and go on our 
way to-morrow on horse rejoicing. The idea 
is that Lopear will think we’re going to make 
the rest of the trip by rail. How about it, 
Bill?” 

4 ‘It’s 0. K.,” ejaculated his pal. 1 ‘ You ’re 
right there with the goods when it comes to 
figurin’ out the enemy’s moves, and you’ll be 
a Gin’ral in the Army yet as sure as the handle 
on my name is Bill.” 

So it was that they made their circuitous 
way around the little burg of San Bias. A 
short way beyond it they crossed the Rio San 
Marie, which was really an arroyo* that is, a 
small stream, and rode on until they came in 
sight of Guzman, the next town. Fortunately 
there was quite a grade at this point so that a 
train must needs go slow in negotiating it. 

At some distance away from the railroad they 
came to a maze of giant cactuses and in the cen- 
ter of this weird forest of spines they picketed 
their horses and started back to San Bias. 
Walking is a hard game in that kind of a coun- 
try and they did not get there until late in the 
afternoon. From the station agent they learned 


Pronounced a-roi'-o.- 


‘ELEVATE AND DONATE!” 67 

that a southbound train was due in forty-five 
minutes. 

“So far so good,” exclaimed Jack; “luck is 
certainly with us. Say, Bill, do you see that 
hombre over there sizing us up. Either this 
heat is getting on my nerves or he’s one of old 
-uopear’s spies. What do you think?” 

As if to confirm this supposition the cholo- 
boy referred to, a villainous-looking scoundrel 
who was armed to the teeth, mounted his horse 
and, heading south, was lost to sight in the 
twinkling of an eye, leaving only a cloud of 
alkali dust to indicate his course. 

“I hope he doesn’t stumble on to our 
horses.” 

“Not much chanst,” returned Bill; “a man 
isn’t going to ride through a cactus thicket just 
for the fun of the thing. Besides he has other 
business to attend to, take it from me.” 

Feeling quite assured that everything was 
going well with them, the boys went over to a 
restaurant, or fonda, as the Mexicans call it, 
but which according to Bill’s lingo was a “quick 
and dirty,” and had a bite to eat. 

The warning long-drawn toot of the loco- 
motive whistle smote their ears and told them 


68 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


that time was up. They waited until the train 
was pulling out before they left the eating house 
and they barely had time to board her from the 
rear end. They went into the car to make things 
“look reg’lar,” as Bill said. 

When San Bias had been left behind far 
enough so that they could not be seen they 
emerged again and sat on the rear platform. 
As the grade was reached and the train slowed 
up in taking it they dropped off. Still the train 
was going fast enough so that neither of them 
landed right side up, as a hobo would have 
done, and they were pretty well shaken up. 

Taken all in all, however, it was a risky piece 
of business, but the boys were playing a hazard- 
ous game for big stakes and it was all in the 
day’s work for them to run long chances. 
Then came a search of some ten minutes before 
they could locate the cactus thicket where their 
horses were picketed. 

They decided to press on by night as the go- 
ing was cooler and they would not run so much 
risk of their trick being discovered by Lopear’s 
spies. Hardly had they started when far down 
the track the sky was brightly illuminated by 
a lightning-like flash ; this was quickly followed 


“ELEVATE AND DONATE!” 69 

by a dull roar and after that came a curious 
flickering red light. 

Dangerous as they realized it was for them 
to go on in the face of this strange develop- 
ment, the curiosity of these boys, who had 
fought through the great World War, was too 
impulsive to be checked. So they urged their 
horses along in the direction of the light and 
after covering two or three miles they were 
able to see the cause of it all. 

The train from which they had jumped was 
wrecked; the cars were derailed and piled up 
on top of each other, and as they were of the 
ancient wooden kind they were burning furi- 
ously. The train had been dynamited! 

The boys dismounted and picketed their 
horses and then crept up within eye-range. 
Lined up against the side of one of the cars that 
had thus far escaped the flames and was still 
intact were some thirty passengers, while 
strewn around the wreckage were as many more 
who were either dead or dying. 

Two or three masked bandits covered the 
line of the living with their rifles and heavy 
forty-fives while two more dynamitards were 
collecting their valuables. Time was, in the 


70 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

frontier days of the United States, when one or 
more bandits of the Frank and* Jesse James 
variety would hold up a train and make the 
passengers “elevate and donate,’ ’ and this 
took real nerve. 

But not so with these cowardly greaser ban- 
dits. They dynamited the train first and killed 
as many of the crew and passengers as possi- 
ble, for it was easier and safer to rob dead men 
than those wlk> were alive. 

The hissing steam from the demolished loco- 
motive, the lurid flickering of the burning cars 
and the agonizing cries of burnt and bruised 
victims made one of the most terrible scenes 
the boys had ever looked upon, and they had 
witnessed some very awful ones indeed. 

The boys crawled still closer to the wreck un- 
til they were within earshot and then there 
came to them the full meaning of the dynamited 
train. One of the bandits, who was evidently 
the leader, shouted: “Are they there, Chilili?” 

“No,” replied the masked robber thus ad- 
dressed, “the Gringo dogs are nowhere to be 
found.” 

A closer scrutiny of the man Chilili disclosed 
the fact that he carried his arm in a sling and 


“ELEVATE AND DONATE! 


7i 


that he was none other than the Bad H ombre 
whom Jack had plugged in the shoulder the 
day before. 

“Carrajo!” hissed the leader; “what a fool 
of a pig you are to let them slip through your 
fingers so easily.” 

“Maybe they weren’t on the train, Senor,” 
whined Chilili. 

“Dog, do you say I lie? I tell you Jose 
here, with his own eyes saw them getting ready 
to board it at San Bias,” said the leader em- 
phatically as he drew his revolver to carry con- 
viction with his words. 

“A thousand pardons, Senor. If you say 
Jose saw them ready to hoard the train they 
must be on it still . 9 9 

“Two hundred measly pesos for the night’s 
work,” shouted the leader in a rage, indicating 
the meager pile of booty that had been taken 
from the sheep-like passengers. Not one cen- 
tavo shall you blunderers have, and no more 
will you ever get from me until you find those 
slippery young Americanos.” 


CHAPTER V 


THROUGH THE DESERT 

D ISGUSTED with the night’s work, in that 
it failed to reveal the Americanos and 
yielded practically no booty, the bandits 
mounted their horses and rode away. As soon 
as they were safely gone Jack and Bill mingled 
with the stunned and stricken passengers, 
started a couple of messengers to San Bias and 
two more to Guzman for help while they worked 
like Trojans rendering first-aid service to those 
who were in need of it. 

An hour later a band of Mexicans came gal- 
loping up the trail, and not being sure whether 
they were citizens come to succor the wounded, 
or were the bandits returning to the scene of 
their crime, the boys again concealed them- 
selves. Learning that it was a friendly caval- 
cade from San Bias, Jack and Bill concluded 
it would be the better part of prudence anyway 
to leave the wounded in their hands and to pro- 
ceed on their way. 


72 


THROUGH THE DESERT 


73 


They felt quite assured now of a night of 
peace and quiet, and Bill congratulated Jack on 
the successful working out of his hunch , though 
he did not express it in just these words. The 
way their lives had been saved seemed to them 
nothing short of a miracle and it’s just such 
narrow escapes as this that lead lucky folks to 
the belief that they bear charmed lives. 

When they had packed the mule again and - 
gotten everything in readiness they rode si- 
lently away from the dreadful scene of wreck- 
age and suffering and were headed once more 
for the oil fields. 

* 1 This is the hundred and thirtieth train that 
has been dynamited by outlaws in Mexico in 
the last hundred days, according to my count, ’ y 
commented Jack soberly; “it’s a wonder Uncle 
Sam stands for it.” 

“More than one a day! Gee, life is awful 
cheap down here even if everything else is 
dear,” followed up Bill. “A Harlem under- 
taker would do a rushing business and get rich 
quick if he’d open up shop, wouldn’t he?” 

“Do you know, Bill, I believe I’ve seen the 
leader of that train-wrecking gang somewhere 
before, but I’m not quite sure because there 


74 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

was so much commotion. I’m almost certain, 
though, that it was that double-dyed criminal, 
old Lopear.” 

4 ‘That sounds reasonable,” affirmed Bill, 
who was more than ready now to believe any- 
thing that Jack might say. “It seems as if 
this mangy old coyote won’t be satisfied until 
he does us dirt.” 

“He may do it yet, but so far we’ve had all 
the best of it.” 

“If I ever get half a chanst at him I’m going 
to fill him full of lead,” vowed Bill, whose 
primitive instincts to annihilate an enemy had 
not yet been squelched by the civilization of 
centuries and the atmosphere of New York 
life. 

And so they rode and talked and talked and 
rode until the first pale streaks of dawn lit up 
the horizon and they were both of a mind that 
it was high time to rest. Again they picketed 
their animals, pitched their tarpaulin, ate a 
hearty breakfast and went to sleep out there 
in the desert without the formality of a guard. 

They slept through the broiling hot day dead 
to the world, they were that tired, nor did they 
wake up until late in the afternoon. 


THROUGH THE DESERT 


75 


“By George, I’m thirsty,” yawned Jack as 
he reached for his canteen. He raised the ves- 
sel to his lips, tilted it up a little and lowered 
it again. 

“Empty?” queried Bill, “here, take mine.” 

Again Jack raised the canteen but with no 
better luck than before. 

“I’ll get some from the cask,” said Bill, tak- 
ing the canteens with him, but when he came 
back there was a strange look in his eyes. 

“Now we are up against it. In our hurry 
and excitement to help them poor people that 
was wrecked last night, we forgot to look after 
our water supply. The price of a mistake of 
this kind is usually the lives of the fellows who 
make them, and the bones of men who forget 
are bleaching from one end of the desert to the 
other. No tellin’ in this blasted country where 
the next water hole is.” 

“Cheer up, Bill, there’s got to be a town 
along the railroad within the next twenty miles 
or so and if we push along we can reach it by 
dark. I guess we can stick it out that long, 
so let’s move pronto.” 

They had watered their horses at a hole the 
night before and anyway their animals were 


76 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

cayuses of the desert breed and, camel-like, they 
were accustomed to going without water for 
long stretches at a time. After they had trav- 
eled a few miles they saw what looked to be 
the casa (house) of a liacendado (planter). It 
looked to he only a mile away, but the atmos- 
phere is so clear in the desert stretches that 
distances are very deceptive. BilPs practiced 
eye, though, recognized it as a four- or five-mile 
ride. 

After considering whether it would be better 
to go straight on to the next town or to make 
the detour and ride over to the hacienda 
(farm), they concluded to take the latter course, 
for a man athirst in the desert lets nothing 
stand between him and the water he wants. 
As they drew nearer the hacienda they saw 
that the casa was one of goodly size, with a few 
laurel trees planted around it, offering kindly 
shade and — glory of glories — there was a well, 
and a well laid out system of irrigating ditches. 

They approached the place cautiously, not 
knowing what manner of man or men they 
might encounter. But once there it didn’t take 
half-an-eye to see that this bold experiment in 
farming in the desert had not been a successful 


THROUGH THE DESERT 


77 


one, for the place had long since been aban- 
doned. What the boys next saw was well cal- 
culated to strike out courage and substitute 
despair in the strongest of hearts. It was 
monstrous and inconceivable and made their 
eyes bulge from their sockets. The well had 
caved in and there was not a drop of water to 
be had ! 

Jack was so thirsty he was about all in and 
Bill was not far behind him. Then it was that 
this same Bill Adams, the boy who never had 
a chance and to whom abstract knowledge was 
as a sealed book, showed a glimmer of concrete 
intelligence that more than made up for all his 
lack of school learning. 

On the giant cactus grows the prickly pear, 
which ; like a water-melon, is composed chiefly 
of water. Bill took his rietto, or lariat as we 
call it, and lassoed the fruit, which he caught 
before it reached the ground. From this fruit 
they got enough water to keep them from dying 
of thirst, but by no means enough to quench it. 

Wearily they turned their horses toward the 
railroad, with Urrutia, the nearest town to the 
south, as their objective point. They had not 
gone many miles before their tongues began to 


78 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

dry out and when the drying process was well 
under way their instruments of speech and 
taste began to swell and burn. 

The animals, too, hardy as they were, be- 
gan to show their need of water by slowing up 
their gait. The desert sun beat down as fiercely 
as ever, with no relief in sight, for they had 
at least ten miles more to go before Urrutia 
could be made. Not long afterward the horses 
began to behave strangely and all but refused 
to go on. They acted as if they had eaten loco 
weed, a kind of poisonous plant that gives a 
horse an imagination all out of proportion to 
his good judgment. Loco is a Spanish word 
that means crazy . 

The mule performed very much better than 
the horses and, although a trifle shaky in the 
knees, she struggled pluckily onward. Both 
boys and beasts presented a most pitiable sight 
with their parched and swollen tongues lolling 
out of their mouths. So that they might make 
more rapid progress Jack and Bill dismounted 
and staggered on, backed up only by the hardy 
grit of American youth, and put their last ef- 
forts into reaching Urrutia — and water. 

Then the vague outline of the town loomed 


THROUGH THE DESERT 


79 


up on the horizon — or was it a mirage — only a 
few miles down the blazing ribbands of steel 
rails. The horses, wise animals that they were, 
pricked up their dejected ears, quit acting fool- 
ish and pushed on with renewed energy, born of 
sensing that water was near. 

Again the boys mounted them and an hour 
and a half later they were in the town the 
pump in the plaza. They gave the animals a 
little water before they themselves tasted it. 
Little by little they slaked their burning thirst 
until they had all of the life-giving liquid they 
wanted. 

It had been a strenuous twenty-four hours, 
and Jack and Bill decided that for their own 
good as well as for the good of their horses 
they had better lay overhand rest until the fol- 
lowing morning. Like all good horsemen, the 
first concern of the boys was for their animals 
and after they had fed and taken care of them 
they sought out food and lodging for them- 
selves. Both of these they secured at El Im- 
partial, a jim-crow little hotel hard by the town 
pump. 

As they went in they noticed that a number 
of vaqueros were seated at tables round about 


8o JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


the room, a few drinking mescal, the favorite 
tipple of the Mexicans. It is a drink made from 
the juice of the Agave plant and as fierce a con- 
coction as was ever manufactured by the pale- 
faces under the name of fire-water. Others were 
playing monte , a gambling game played with a 
Spanish pack of cards. 

Bill, he of the primitive instincts, could 
never resist the temptation to watch a game of 
cards and he stopped for a few moments to 
look on, and Jack showed signs of interest, too. 

1 1 Queer looking cards, aren’t they,” allowed 
Jack, who had never seen their like before. 

“They’re Spanish cards,” said Bill, and then 
he explained: “the regular Spanish deck has 
only forty cards in it and they are a trifle nar- 
rower and about four times greasier than our 
cards are. These hombres use them altogether 
down here and you’ll find them in the border 
towns of Texas, too.” 

“ Judging from their appearance no one but 
a Mexican could play with them,” was Jack’s 
comment. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” was Bill’s rejoinder; 
“once you savvy them they are just as easy to 
play with as our cards at home, and I used to 


THROUGH THE DESERT 


81 


believe when I played with Longhorn "Whitta- 
ker and Senor Fernando Gomez that I could 
play some cards with a Spanish deck.” 

It was then somewhere in the neighborhood 
of three o’clock in the afternoon, and as the 
boys had had a particularly trying day and 
were worn out by their sufferings in the desert 
they had only two outstanding ideas, the first 
f which was to eat and the second was to go 
to bed. 

Mexican cooking is pretty good when it is 
good, .and Senora Quintero, the wife of el dueno 
(the owner), was all that could be hoped for 
this side of Mexico City, and so to these hungry 
youngsters the grub was first class in every 
particular. And such beds! They were not 
much as beds go in the States, but they were 
Waldorf-Astoria to the young prospectors who 
had been sleeping on the desert sands. As J ack 
expressed it, “ It was paradise enow!” 

That evening as the burning ball of fire was 
slipping down the hill of the world over in the 
west there came into town half a dozen hard- 
riding Mexicans. To the ordinary observer 
they looked like any other bunch of vaqueros 
out for an evening of pleasure, if burning their 


82 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


lights out with mescal , and losing their ill- 
gotten pesos at Spanish monte could be called 
pleasure. At any rate it was their chief pas- 
time when not engaged in cock-fights or using 
the bastinado , figuratively speaking, on some 
poor Americano. 

But if either of the boys who were “ wrapped 
in the arms of Murphy/ ’ as Bill called Mor- 
pheus, could have seen the newcomers they 
w T ould have instantly recognized among them 
the figure of a greaser whom they had once 
met before, to wit: the Bad Hombre of Chilili . 
His arm still seemed a little game , but the 
wound in his shoulder had healed sufficiently 
so that a sling was no longer needed. 

Answers to Chilili ’s inquiries were evidently 
to his liking, for he closed his yellow teeth and, 
drawing his lips apart, he simulated a grin 
which was his way of showing his satisfaction. 
He had been on the right trail after all and 
now, at last, the Gringo dogs w T ere in the hotel 
and at his mercy. It was all so easy that he 
really permitted himself to laugh out loud, an 
almost unheard-of achievement on his part and 
one which his men took cognizance of. 

As you will recall, Chilili had twice been out- 


THROUGH THE DESERT 83 

witted by the Americano boys and his chief, 
old Lopear, had evinced in no uncertain a fash- 
ion his displeasure at the gigantic piece of 
stupidity his lieutenant showed in letting, as 
he thought, the boys get away when the train 
was dynamited. 

Chilili, smarting keenly under this rebuke 
from Lopear, as well as from the remembrance 
of the ignoble way in which he got the wound 
in his shoulder, was resolved that this, the third 
time, he would make good, and he had now 
reached a point where he did not care whether 
he brought the two Americano boys to his chief 
dead or alive. 

He imparted this choice bit of information 
to his partners in crime as the cavalcade 
swooped down the narrow street. They reined 
up short in front of the ’dobe hotel, dismounted 
before their horses had yet come to full stop, 
and tied the latter to a hitching rack in front 
of the place. 

Not to be gypped this time, Chilili drew his 
revolver and confidently swaggered into the ho- 
tel. A quick glance from his bead-like eyes 
showed him that his quarry was not there. He 
spoke rapidly to the proprietor and then both 


84 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

of them talked at once, as is the wont of the 
Latin races. From this breech-loading, auto- 
matic back-action, double-barreled conversa- 
tion he was able to gather that the Americanos 
had taken a room for the night and were, even 
at this early hour, occupying it. It was the first 
room at the head of the stairs, he was informed. 

Chilili seated himself at a table with his com- 
panion robbers, called loudly for mescal , and 
as they sat there drinking he boastfully un- 
folded his scheme for capturing single-handed 
the Gringo-dogs in the room above. After a 
drinking bout, one of his men produced the in- 
evitable greasy deck of monte cards and with 
the others he started a game. As they under- 
stood it they would not be needed and so no 
longer concerned themselves about the affair. 

The stone steps leading to the floor above 
to the sleeping rooms, or dormitoros as they 
call them in Spanish, were built on the outside 
of the hotel — not much of an improvement over 
the ladders used by the Hopi Indians. At the 
top of the steps ran a narrow balcony along 
the wall for nearly the length of the end and 
opening on this balcony were the doors leading 
to the rooms. 


THROUGH THE DESERT 85 

There were no window openings on this side 
of the ’dobe, all of these being located on the 
sides and at the opposite end. These openings, 
which w r ere near the eaves, were fitted only with 
heavy shutters, for glass is seldom used where 
summer heat prevails the year ’round. The 
purpose of this construction, let it be known, 
is so that marauders, which were as thick in 
this part of the country as flies in the coffee, 
would find it a hard job to effect an entrance. 

After a hand or two had been dealt around 
Chilili dropped out of the game and vamoosed 
outside. On reaching the steps he drew his 
revolvers from their ornately carved holsters 
and cocked them. Then he quietly went up the 
stone steps leading to the balcony and on reach- 
ing the top he tapped lightly on the nearest 
door w T ith the muzzle of his revolver. 

Stepping back a pace he waited. As there 
was no response forthcoming Chilili grew im- 
patient and he knocked again — this time a trifle 
louder. Came then Bill’s gruff and sleepy 
voice : 

“Who’siU” 

“It is me, Senor, Manual Quintero,” lied 
Chilili softly. 


86 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


4 ‘All right, Manual, glad to meet you. Now 
you can go back to bed,” was BilPs sarcastic 
rejoinder. 

“Ah, but, Senor, it is of mucho importance,” 
continued Chilili, curbing bis voice to as soft 
a pitch as possible, “and it is very dangerous 
for me to be seen here in the balcony talking 
to you. Please, Senor, open the door . 9 ’ 

“Who did you say you are?” again queried 
Bill, evidently a little wider awake. 

“Manual Quintero,” answered Chilili, who 
by this time was thoroughly exasperated by the 
Americano’s slow methods of doing business. 
“I am the proprietario of the hotel.” 

“Oh, I understand now,” announced the 
voice on the other side; “wait till I get my 
pants on and I’ll open the door.” 

Chilili stood tense, his guns balanced in his 
hands, waiting for the door to open. A slight 
noise on the roof, the edge of which was only 
a couple of feet above his head, caused him to 
raise his eyes and the next instant he was look- 
ing into the barrel of a .45. 

“One move, one word, Chilili, and I’ll blow 
the top of your ornery head off,” said Jack, 
who was the man back of the gun. 



■ 


mZSar 








ONE MOVE, ONE WORD, CHILILI, AND I’LL BLOW r lHE POP OI 
YOUR HEAD OFF’ ” — Page 86 









* 































THROUGH THE DESERT 87 

The old Mex rascal, noted for his cunning 
among his own cowardly cut-throats, was as so 
much cheese when pitted against the wits of 
the American boys. It is this kind of initiative 
and daring that has made the United States 
what she is to-day and a nation to he feared. 

Chilili was too dumbfounded to do anything 
except to stand with his lower jaw hanging in 
amazement. 

“Put your revolvers in their holsters/ ’ com- 
manded Jack in his low, even voice; “and turn 
your back toward the door, pronto.” 

Chihli had on a previous occasion learned to 
his sorrow that Jack was a better and quicker 
man in every respect with the six-guns than 
himself. Consequently he hastened to obey, for 
however lightly he valued the lives of others, 
he prized his own hide highly. 

Almost simultaneously he heard the door 
open behind him and felt the muzzle of a gun 
jammed into the small of his back. 

Then this command from Bill: “Now, Mr. 
Bad Hombre, just do a little backward march 
into the room here and oblige yours truly/ ’ 

Chilili backed into the room, muttering under 
his breath, hut he was not invoking evil on the 


88 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


heads of his young captors ; instead he was call- 
ing himself several kinds of a fool for not hav- 
ing brought his lieutenant with him, so that 
at least the odds would have been even, as the 
Irishman said. 

Jack dropped lightly to the balcony and fol- 
lowed him. Once inside, the boys relieved him 
of his shooting irons, gagged him so that he 
could make no sound and tied him securely to 
one of the beds. Tying is part of a sailor’s edu- 
cation, so Bill tied his hands back of him and 
then drawing his feet up he hound them to his 
hands. 

“There,” said Bill as he finished the job, 
“I’ve got the old skulking coyote trussed up 
like a New England turkey ready to hang on a 
spit to he roasted.” 

Not caring about taking the chance of meet- 
ing Chilili’s gang, which Jack knew he had 
brought with him, the hoys made a rope out of 
the blankets of the bed. Tying one end to the 
bed-post, Bill tossed the other end out of the 
window. 

Down this improvised rope he slid and Jack 
followed him, hurling back the taunt as he 
crawled out over the window-sill: “Better luck 


THROUGH THE DESERT 89 

next time, Chilili. Only next time when we 
meet I’m going to shoot first and ask questions 
afterward.” 

Once on terra firma they tiptoed around to 
the front of the place and cautiously looked 
into the hotel. There, inside, as they had confi- 
dently expected to find them, still sat Chilili , s 
gang of bandits drinking mescal and playing 
monte without the slightest suspicion in the 
world that ill luck had befallen their chief, the 
Bad Hombre. 

While Bill went around to the stable where 
they had put up their horses, to saddle them and 
to pack the mule, which he was able to do alone 
by using the square-hitch , J ack deliberately un- 
tied the six horses belonging to the bandits 
from the hitching-rack and tied them all to- 
gether by their bridles. In an incredibly short 
timd Bill returned with their own horses, which 
they lost no time in mounting, and leading the 
bandits’ horses after them they quietly rode 
out of town. 

After they had covered some ten miles they 
released the animals they had taken, turned 
them around toward town, and the animals, in 


90 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

horse fashion, trotted slowly and aimlessly hack 
together. 

“We certainly had a close shave that time, 
Bill,” spoke np Jack, when they were well 
out of the frying pan. 

“What I’d like to know is how yon ever 
came to get np?” asked his partner. 

“It was this way,” explained Jack; “that 
little room was so beastly hot I woke np al- 
most suffocated. I went over to the window 
and leaned out to get a breath of fresh air, 
when I saw Chilili and his gang riding np the 
street. I recognized the old coyote the moment 
I laid my eyes on him. 

i i Then I woke yon np to tell yon that he was 
downstairs waiting for ns. But I have to hand 
it to you, Bill, for your scheme of having me 
crawl out of the window, np on to the roof 
and stick Chilili np while he was waiting for 
you to open the door.” 

“Don’t mention it, Jack,” replied that 
worthy, “I may look fat but I’m not thick all 
the time.” 


CHAPTER VI 


INTO THE OIL FIELDS 

A CCORDING to the information Jack’s 
father had given him before he left New 
York the wells of the Mexican Consolidated 
Oil Company , Ltd., were located at or near the 
town of Terrazas. They had ridden boldly 
through Sabinal, San Pedro, Summit and Cor- 
ralitos and had seen neither hide nor hair of 
either the Bad Hombre or Senor Lopear. 

Terrazas was, they figured, about thirty-five 
miles from Corralitos, the town they had just 
left behind them. They crossed the Rio Casa 
Grande a mile outside of the town and, since 
there were no other settlements or towns be- 
tween Corralitos and Terrazas, they thought it 
better to follow the trail leading along the river, 
or arroyo as it really is, than the shorter one 
which runs parallel to the railroad. The Rio 
Casa Grande flows south by southeast from 
Corralitos for a distance of fifteen miles, then 
bends to the west and touches at Terrazas. 


91 


92 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

Once safely clear of Corralitos the boys 
slackened their pace and for the first time since 
they had entered Mexico they felt compara- 
tively safe from being harassed by either Lop- 
ear or his gang of assassins. 

“ I don’t believe the Bad H ombre will trou- 
ble us again,” said Bill optimistically; “he’s 
come to the conclusion that you’re no slouch at 
playin’ bad man yourself. I knew by the way 
he acted when we were trussin’ him up that 
he was scared stiff, and once you throw a good 
scare into a bad Mexican he doesn’t get over it 
for a long, long time.” 

“When I told him that next time I’d shoot 
first and ask questions afterward I meant it. 
You know what he’d have done if he’d had the 
drop on us. He’d have plugged us without the 
slightest compunction and then have dragged us 
by our necks at the end of a rope tied to his sad- 
dle to that miserable blood-thirsty chief of his. 
According to my way of thinking we’ve been 
altogether too easy on him. I’m getting mighty 
tired of letting this cheap greaser pester us. 
All I hope now is that on reaching Terrazas 
we can get some kind of a line on what’s been 
going on at the Mexican Consolidated wells and 


INTO THE OIL FIELDS 


93 

then get out of this bloomin’ country as quick 
as horses will carry us. 

“You see, Bill, as far as the United States 
is concerned, the whole trouble started when 
Uncle Sam wouldn’t recognize Villa,” con- 
tinued Jack, who was in a talkative mood for 
the first time since they crossed the border. 
“At that time Villa was friendly to Americans 
and all of his advisers were Americans. Then 
when Carranza was officially backed up by the 
government at Washington for President, of 
course Villa couldn’t see it that way at all be- 
cause he had kind of figured out that he was the 
man for the job, so naturally he had no further 
use for the United States. 

“Villa was the only man in Mexico who was 
bloody enough, and murderous enough, to 
have coped successfully with the bandits and 
revolutionists that overrun the country from 
one end of it to the other. As things' now stand 
the Mexicans haven’t the slightest use for the 
Americans since the Carranzistas have been 
liberally supplied with money by the Germans 
and, hence, a white man doesn’t stand the ghost 
of a show down here. Just before we left home 
I read in the papers that foxy old Carranza had 


94 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

got up a fine scheme to bring all of the Ameri- 
can owned mines, oil wells, and everything else 
in Mexico that is worth a peso, under the own- 
ership of the Mexican govemment. ,, 

“How’s he goin’ to do it?” asked Bill, blink- 
ing his eyes. 

“The way he’s going to do it is like this: be- 
fore a fellow can prospect for oil or do any 
drilling he must obtain a permit. But in order 
to get such a permit he must agree in advance 
that any and all wells he drills will become the 
property of the Mexican government. In other 
words he finds the oil and then turns it over 
to the government without compensation. This 
scheme will effectually keep out further Ameri- 
can prospectors, while the going wells that 
Americans own, either in whole or in part, will 
be retrieved by crook, yes, even if they have 
to send a second-story man and safe blower to 
Montclair to get the stock. ’ ’ 

“There’s only one way things will ever be 
straightened out in this country and that’s by 
Uncle Sam cornin’ down here and heatin’ the 
ears off these greasers until they know they’ve 
been done up,” was Bill’s solution for an inter- 
national problem that has kept even President 


INTO THE OIL FIELDS 


95 


Wilson guessing ever since he has been in office. 

“I hope the U. S. will do something soon, it 
looks to me as if that’s the only way my father 
will ever break even on this oil stock of his and 
I suppose he’s only one of thousands of other 
Americans in the same boat. But what’s that I 
see looming up yonder in the distance?*’ ex- 
claimed Jack, shading his eyes with his hand. 

“ Terrazas, or you can strike me dead with 
a belayin’ pin!” cried Bill in great good 
humor. 

“You’re not on board ship now, matie, and 
there isn’t such a thing as a belaying pin within 
a thousand miles of here,” laughed Jack. 

“I was only speakin’ paragorically,” apolo- 
gized his partner. 

Although Terrazas had promised a couple of 
years before to gush into an oil district which 
would compare favorably with that of Tampico 
on the east coast of Mexico, what with the ban- 
dits in Chihuahua and the continued policy of 
Carranza to drive the Americans from Mexico, 
it was all but dead. As it was, what the boys 
saw as they rode down the main street of the oil 
town was roughly built wooden shacks lined up 


96 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

on either side which served as stores, res- 
taurants and hotels. 

Back of them were any number of ungainly 
derricks, whose tops poked into the air to 
heights varying from seventy to eighty feet. 
There was one noticable thing lacking, though, 
and that was the hustle and bustle which always 
pervades a live oil town of any magnitude. It 
was hard for the boys to believe that Terrazas 
had ever been a booming town filled with wild- 
catters, as oil prospectors are nicknamed, and 
all the^rest of the motley crew that congregates 
where treasures are taken from the bowels of 
the earth. The numerous towering rigs spoke 
more plainly than words of the once successful 
oil wells which were now closed down. There 
they found not only the Mexican Consolidated 
wells, of which Jack’s father was one of the 
largest owners, but also those of several other 
concerns both small and large, a couple of them 
American, a few more British, and the rest all 
German and Mexican owned. 

The boys were fascinated by the grim rigs and 
giant derricks, which are not only used for 
drilling the wells but for pumping the oil from 
them after they are drilled. They were sur- 


INTO THE OIL FIELDS 


97 


prised, too, at the number of wells in the dis- 
trict and the immense amount of work that had 
been done to get this great industry into opera- 
tion in Terrazas. And all to no purpose, for 
nine-tenths of the wells were closed down. 

Small wonder that Jack and Bill took such a 
lively interest in what they saw, for there is 
something uncanny about the finding of hid- 
den treasures in this old earth of ours, be it 
doubloons buried by pirates who sailed the 
Spanish main, gold that has to be fought for in 
Alaska, precious stones that are found on the 
coast of Africa, or the equally valuable and 
far more useful oil that flows from the wells in 
Mexico. 

All oil as it comes from the earth is crude 
oil , rock oil , mineral oil or petroleum, as it is 
variously called, and this contains a number of 
other oils, the best known of which are kero- 
sene and gasoline . Sometimes kerosene is 
called petroleum, but this is entirely wrong, for 
petroleum is the oil as it comes from the well. 

This crude oil, or petroleum, is a dark, yel- 
lowish-brown inflammable liquid as it comes 
from the well. The word petroleum is formed 
by combining the Greek word petros, which 


98 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

means rock , and the Latin word oleum , which 
means oil , hence petroleum means rock-oil , and 
you will presently discover why it is called so. 

Petroleum, or rock-oil, has been known and 
used for many centuries. In Egypt and Indo- 
China history tells us that bitumen, which is 
pitch, was in use in very early times. In Peru, 
petroleum was probably known for hundreds 
of years before the occupation of South 
America by the Spanish, for an old Spanish 
book printed in 1569 describes in a very amus- 
ing way — at least it is amusing to us now — the 
method of obtaining it from the earth. It is as 
follows : 

“Of a Gumme that is taken out from under 
the Grounde. ... In the Callao, being a Coun- 
try of Peru, there is a province which does not 
bear any tree or any plante, because the 
grounde is full of Gummes, and from this 
grounde the Indians take out a licour that serv- 
eth them to heal many diseases and to take it 
out they use it in this manner. 

‘ 1 They make of the Earth certeyne sestemes, 
very greate and set them upon timber or canes 
and underneath they put a thing that may re- 
serve the licour which commeth out of them 


INTO THE OIL FIELDS 


99 


and they place them in the Snnne and with its 
heate and its strength thereof the Gumme is 
melted or the liconr which the Earth hath and 
the sesterns remayne without any licour which 
profiteth to make fire of, for in that place there 
are no trees or any other thing to make fire of. 

“And it is an evill light, for it casteth out 
black smoke and an horrible smell and for all 
this, seeing they have no other thing to make 
fire of, they take a paynes with it. The licour 
which cometh forthwith of it, profiteth for many 
diseases, especially when they depend on colds 
or cold causes. It does away any griefe of the 
sayde cause and all swellinges which come 
thereof. They heale all evilles which the Car- 
ana and the Tacamboca doo heale. That which 
they sent me is a red colour somewhat darke,. 
and it hath a goode smell .’ ’ 

This then is the method by which the primi- 
tive Indians of Peru obtained oil from the 
ground and since the civilization of the Incas 
of Peru and the Nahuans of Mexico were about 
alike there is no doubt but that the aborigines 
of Mexico did likewise. 

Exactly how mother nature made crude oil, 
or petroleum, is not certainly known even to 


100 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


the scientists of to-day. There are two ideas 
as to how it was formed just as there are two 
theories concerning nearly everything else. 
Thus it is that chemists believe that petroleum 
is of inorganic origin, which means that it is 
the result of chemical action of carbon and 
hydrogen when they come in contact with each 
other underground. 

Geologists, on the other hand, believe that 
petroleum is of organic origin, due to the slow 
decomposition of plant or animal remains. And 
here again the geologists are divided, for while 
some claim that the oil is of former plant life 
which grew in prehistoric marshes, others hold 
that the oils are in all respects the same as 
those cpmposed of animals we find in the ocean 
to-day. 

And so it is supposed that the light colored 
crude oil found in Pennsylvania is of vegetable 
origin, while the dark and heavy crudes of the 
Gulf states and Mexico are thought to be of 
animal origin. 

To prove his theory that crude oil is formed 
by the remains of animals that lived in the sea, 
Prof. Engler produced artificially from fish oil 


INTO THE OIL FIELDS 101 

a kerosene which could not be told from that 
which is distilled from crude oil. 

Be all of the above as it may, it has been 
found that petroleum is always associated with 
salt and water and this may yet prove to be 
the secret of the mysterious formation of rock 
oils. To this fact, too, curiously enough, was 
due the beginning of the great American 
petroleum industry, for although, as you have 
seen, the Indians knew of the existence of oil 
in the earth and used it as a cure-all, the real 
method of obtaining it was discovered or de- 
vised by the American salt-makers of pioneer 
days. 

In those early days the difficulty of bringing 
salt from its natural sources over the Alle- 
gheny mountains caused the salt men to seek 
elsewhere for a supply. Thus it was that* they 
were led to investigate certain salt springs in 
Pennsylvania which had been brought to light 
by wild animals, or salt-licks , as the pioneers 
called them. 

At first these springs yielded enough salt for 
their purposes but later the salt men were 
obliged to dig more springs so that they could 
get the brine they needed from which to make 


102 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


their salt by evaporation. In doing this, how- 
ever, they were greatly troubled by a black, 
oily liquid which floated on top of the brine and 
had a very disagreeable odor. They couldn’t 
savvy it at all, as Bill would say. 

For a good many years after this crude oil 
was a bugbear to the salt-makers and its only 
use was for medicinal purposes, for, as you 
have already learned, it was supposed to cure 
many ailments. But there was a bigger and 
better use for it and this was for illuminating 
purposes, and once that kerosene had been dis- 
tilled from it, the dizzy light of the candle was 
seen no more. 

Fish, whale and lard oil had been used from 
time out of mind for lighting purposes, that is, 
a wick having its lower end put into the oil 
would cause the latter to rise to the upper end 
of it by what is called in physics capillary 
attraction, when it could be lit. That crude oil 
was also used for this purpose there is not the 
slightest doubt. 

The idea of drilling a well to get oil, as a well 
is drilled to obtain water, does not, however, 
seem to have occurred to any one until about 
the middle of the last century. Then, in 1859, 


INTO THE OIL FIELDS 


103 


the first oil well was drilled in the United States 
by E. L. Drake and his stillman, who went by 
the name of “Uncle Billy” Smith. 

This pioneer oil well was located on the 
banks of Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, and since 
that time about two hundred thousand wells 
have been drilled and more than three billion 
barrels have been produced from the various 
wells in the United States which have since 
been opened. A great deal has been said about 
the coal supply giving out but there is much 
more danger of the oil supply giving out, for 
while only about one per cent of the coal in the 
United States is exhausted, 30 per cent of the 
oil has already been used. 

With the increased use of kerosene, gasoline 
and lubricating oils, all of which is obtained 
by distilling crude oil, for running internal com- 
bustion engines of every description, including 
stationary units of one up to a thousand horse- 
power, and for every conceivable purpose from 
running a house pump or a bicycle to an air- 
plane or a locomotive, it is natural that the 
United States should turn to Mexico for its 
future petroleum supply, and from this you can 
see that Mr. Heaton’s judgment in investing 


104 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

in Mexican Consolidated was fundamentally 
sound. 

Another thing which convinced Jack that his 
father had been right in buying the block of 
stock was that since the discovery of oil on Oil 
Creek sixty years ago, or thereabouts, wells 
have been opened up right along on a line run- 
ning at an angle of 45 degrees to the line which 
runs east and west through Oil Creek. This 
line passes through the most productive oil 
regions of Oklahoma and Texas and thence runs 
through that part of Chihuahua where the wells 
of the Mexican Consolidated are located. 

Of course there is not one continuous pool of 
oil all the way along this imaginary line and 
there are many dry spots in between, but it is 
nevertheless a fact that nearly all of the oil 
which has so far been found lies in this general 
direction. In his brief experience as an oil 
engine salesman Jack had learned all of the 
above points and this is one of the reasons why 
he had advised his father to hang on to his 
stock even when the odds seemed so heavily 
against him. 

Since the accumulation of petroleum deposits 
in the earth depends on the presence of coarse- 


INTO THE OIL FIELDS 105 

grained, porous rocks of a sandstone nature to 
form the reservoirs to hold it, geologists who 
have made a study of these rock formations are 
able to predict with a fair degree of accuracy 
where oil will be found. Erosion, which means 
the eating away of rocks by the action of water, 
has, as a rule, worn these formations on the 
surface of the earth into sand and, as a conse- 
quence, these sands are known as oil sands . 

In the early days of oil prospecting there 
was a lot of bunk just as there is in every new 
thing. There were certain men who claimed to 
be diviners , or oil smellers as they were called, 
and they charged enormous prices for pretend- 
ing to find oil veins or pools. This they did by 
means of what is known as a divining rod , or 
finding stick . It consists of a forked piece of 
witch-hazel or peach tree wood, and long before 
and for years after oil was found these so- 
called diviners used the stick to enable them, 
as they claimed, to find precious metals and all 
other kinds of hidden treasure, then water, and 
later on oil, in the earth. 

While, of course, there’s nothing in it, its 
interesting to know how they worked the 
scheme. They held the forked ends of the stick 


io6 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


between their thumbs and fingers with the large 
end out from their bodies and in a line with the 
surface of the earth. Then they walked about 
over the ground wherein the precious thing they 
wanted to discover was believed to be located. 
When they passed directly over it the large end 
of the stick was suddenly pulled down toward 
the earth, or at least that is what foolish people 
believed took place. Divining rods and oil 
smellers have now gone entirely out of date 
and scientific methods have taken their places. 

Along the 45 degree line from Oil Creek, Pa., 
geologists, who are the real oil-smellers of to- 
day, have found certain formations of sand- 
stone rock in the earths crust which have 
proven to be the best locations for oil fields. 
In general these formations consist of upward 
folds of the rock. The peaks of these folds are 
known as anticlines , while the valleys between 
the peaks are known as synclines. 

Underneath these folds the contour is similar 
to the surface, contour and consequently domes 
are found. It is in these domes that the oil 
collects on top of the water because its specific 
gravity, or let’s say its weight, is less than that 
of the water, and, hence, it floats. 


) 


INTO THE OIL FIELDS 107 

On riding into Terrazas, Jack had at once 
been struck by the peculiar rock formation 
which certainly indicated that the region was 
full of oil. The odor of crude oil in the air 
permeated everything and it seemed clear to 
Jack that the wells which were closed down 
were closed not because of the exhaustion of 
the oil in that locality but because the Mexicans 
were determined to hog everything in sight. 

“By the great horn spoon !” ejaculated Jack; 
“there’s oil here and a-plenty of it as sure as 
there’s a sun in the heavens above us. But 
what stumps me is why that German outfit is 
pumping oil while the Mexican Consolidated is 
shut down.” 

“So is that American Company over there 
and this British outfit across the street,” 
pointed out Bill. 

“The American and British Companies can’t 
operate because of the impossible conditions 
imposed on them by the Carranzista govern- 
ment, but what is in the way of the Mexican 
Consolidated , in which all of the officers are 
Mexicans, from doing business f Certainly a 
Mexican owned oil company could operate 
where all the others would fail. 


io8 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


Bill scratched his head. “ I guess too many 
American dollars have been sunk into it. These 
greasers have got all the coin they can get out 
of the Americans and now they ’re going to have 
the oil wells, too. Clever birds, I calls them ! ’ ’ 
“Zowie!” exclaimed Jack, 4 ‘and I suspect 
that these Germans are in with them fifty-fifty 
on the deal. The Mexicans dearly love the Ger- 
mans and when they can get rid of the Ameri- 
cans a bunch of German capitalists will back the 
Mexican Consolidated to the limit. And so the 
Consolidated shuts down, pulls otf this fake 
stuff about the oil source being exhausted and 
think they’re going to get away with it. 

“On the other hand they know that unless 
they can get their hands on the stock that is 
owned by Americans they’ll have a big row, so 
their idea is to buy up all of the outstanding 
American stock — for nothing. Failing to get 
it in this high-handed way they will even resort 
to stealing it as old Lopear did Dad’s.” 

“You’re right every time, Buddy,” said Bill; 
“but we’ll beat them to it yet.” 



DATED IS SHUT DOWN’ ”—Paae 107 
















CHAPTER VII 


THE ABANDONED GUSHERS 

B RIGHT and early the next morning 1 the 
hoys were up and ready for the day’s 
work. They were greatly refreshed after their 
sleep in something that approached a real bed, 
and after a Mexican breakfast, cooked by a 
Chinaman, for a couple of American boys, they 
felt in every way fit and proper. 

“ What’s on your young mind for to-day?” 
Bill asked as they swung out on the street. 

“Let's take a stroll out of earshot of these 
greasers and talk things over,” said Jack, and 
when they were down the street a ways he un- 
folded his plan. “My idea of things is like 
this : first we ’ll scout out the wells of the Mexi- 
can Consolidated . Once on its property we’ll 
give them the ‘once over.' It is just possible 
that without much trouble we may be able to 
find out why the gushers have stopped gushing. 
At any rate, we’ll pry the lid off of things and 
109 


no JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


‘see why the darned thing doesn’t work’ as the 
kid said when he took his Ingersoll to pieces.” 

“It doesn’t look as if we’ll have any trouble 
takin’ a look at the wells, things are so peace- 
ful-like,” agreed Bill sadly. 

“Don’t worry, Bill, there’ll be enough excite- 
ment and some to spare before we get out of 
Terrazas. Naturally since there is something 
crooked going on the men back of the Mexican 
Consolidated have used every effort to prevent 
us from coming down here. Witness the at- 
tempt of scar-faced Lopear to get my Dad’s 
securities and when he failed in this observe 
how strenuously his bandits tried to get us. On 
the other hand, we ’re here now in spite of their 
dastardly efforts. By the way, Bill, I learned 
last night that there are about fifty Americans 
here in town.” 

“Fifty Americans!” ejaculated Bill; “well 
fifty Americans are worth more than a thousand 
greasers any day.” 

“That’s the reason the Mexicans won’t mo- 
lest us now,” returned Jack. “They know that 
if they do, it will mean a deal of trouble for 
them and I don ’t believe those that are here are 
looking for trouble yet. Another thing, by this 


THE ABANDONED GUSHERS nr 


time they have undoubtedly covered up their 
crooked work here as far as the Consolidated is 
concerned, since they know we are going to in- 
vestigate the wells. I think that upon the ex- 
tent they have covered up their dirty work will 
depend the amount of freedom well be given in 
investigating things. ’ 9 

“What you mean,” reiterated Bill, just to 
make sure he understood aright, “is that the 
more they let us look around and about, the 
harder it will be for us to find out what’s wrong 
and that we’ll find everything is Jake on the 
face of things?” 

“Exactly. Now, then, it’s up to us to use 
our wits to see just where the frame-up comes 
in and in doing so we’ll start on the supposition 
that the wells are 0. K., and that the shut-down 
is due to some cooked-up scheme of the officers 
of the Mexican Consolidated. Now there’s an 
American company here called the Terrazas 
Petroleum Products Corporation and I suggest 
that we go over there, have a little talk on the 
quiet with some one and get, if possible, some 
inside information regarding the real situation 
here. ’ ’ 

“Let’s go see/’ urged Bill, and the boys 


112 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

did a right about and went back up the street 
again. 

The office of the American firm, which was 
located in a large wooden shack, was just off 
the main street, and back of it were a dozen 
wells with their derricks. Not a wheel was 
turning and things were as dead as a door-nail. 

“ Maybe the wells have run dry,” suggested 
Bill, for in his simple mind he couldn’t believe 
that if there was oil in the wells the men who 
owned them could not make some arrangement 
and pump it out. 

“ Don’t you believe it,” was Jack’s rejoinder, 
“but let’s find out.” 

They went into the office of the American 
Company and there they asked for and met the 
General Manager. He was a big man with an 
out-of-door look and had the bearing of one 
who had been in many parts of the world and 
had seen much of it, especially in its hard 
phases. And like all men of wide experience, 
he proved to be a human being and not a living 
icicle. 

You have probably very often met men who 
acted as if they were frozen stiff from the neck 
up and you can set it down that such a man is 


THE ABANDONED GUSHERS 113 

one of very small experience in this world, 
though he may be a stockholder in the First Na- 
tional Bank. Mr. Richardson, for this was the 
General Manager's name, was the antithesis of 
the icicle type of man. 

‘ ‘ Hello, strangers , 9 9 he said, his big, pleasant 
voice filling the office and he shook hands with 
each of them heartily. “Welcome to onr city. 
When did you fellows blow in? I didn't know 
an American could get nearer Terrazas than El 
Paso, or Vera Cruz. Sit down, boys, and tell 
me what I can do for you. ' ' 

Jack, having a better command of the English 
language than Bill, acted as spokesman. He ex- 
plained at some length the exciting ride they 
had had on their way down from El Paso, for 
Mr. Richardson knew what tremendous risks 
they had run. 

“You are certainly a couple of nervy young- 
sters!" said he as he eyed the boys admiringly. 
“But what on earth brought you down here?" 

Then Jack went into the details of their mis- 
sion and told him of his suspicions concerning 
the Mexican Consolidated. 

“Just a second," interrupted Mr. Richard- 
son at a critical point in his story. “You say 


114 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

that the second-story man and leader of the 
bandits had a part of one ear cnt off ? ’ 1 

“Yes, and he had an ugly looking scar on his 
forehead, too,” replied Jack. 

“That is a strange coincidence because the 
promoter who is back of the Mexican Consoli- 
dated here is marked in exactly the same fash- 
ion. He looks as though a grizzly bear had 
wrestled with him, but I expect it was some 
greaser. He goes by the name of Jose Lopez, 
though I doubt very much if that is his right 
name. I haven ’t seen him around here -for the 
past two or three weeks, but go on with your 
story.” 

When Jack told him about his distrust con- 
cerning the oil wells of the Mexican Consoli- 
dated , Mr. Richardson had this to say: “Oil 
wells differ greatly in the way in which they 
produce. While some produce at the outset, 
when the flow is greatest, only three or four 
barrels of oil a day, some of the big gushers 
produce a hundred thousand barrels a day. As 
a rule, wells which show such a large natural 
production when first tapped, usually quiet 
down quickly with a great decrease in produo- 


THE ABANDONED GUSHERS 115 

tion, and such gushers have even been known 
to fail altogether.” 

‘ 4 That’s just what the Mexican Consolidated 
claims has happened to their wells/ * put in 
Jack, who began to wonder if his surmises had 
been wrong and that the wells had really given 
out. 

“Then they are a lying pack of coyotes / 1 
bluntly asserted Mr. Richardson, and Bill and 
Jack exchanged significant glances of triumph. 

“Look at this,” he continued, taking from his 
desk a big blue-print map of the oil-fields of 
Terrazas; “here we are now,” putting his fin- 
ger-tip on a white square on the print. This 
square is the building you are in now; these 
twelve circles represent the rigs on our wells 
and as you see they are all located in a circle 
around that big ’dobe oil tank. 

‘ ‘ There on the property, right next to us, are 
five more wells belonging to the Chihuahua Oil 
Refining Company, which is owned by German 
capitalists, and further on but adjoining these 
wells is the property of the Mexican Consoli- 
dated Oil Compa/ny, Limited, which is the one 
you boys are interested in. Now, look out of 
the window. What do you see?” 


Ii6 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


“ Big doings at the German owned wells / 9 
spoke np Bill. 

‘ ‘ Precisely , 9 9 said Mr. Richardson and then 
he continued, “the Chihuahua Company is tak- 
ing about fifty thousand barrels of oil a day 
from their wells. On the other hand both our 
Company on one side of them and the Mexican 
Consolidated Company on the other side of 
them are closed down. We have plenty of oil 
but we have been forced to shut down because 
the Mexican government claims that they own 
our wells. 

“If we operate, the government will confis- 
cate our oil and rather than submit to such an 
outrage- we are waiting, Micawber-like, for 
‘something to turn up/ although this inactivity 
means a big loss to us. Why the Mexican Con- 
solidated should shut down, I have not been 
able to fathom, for they have the full protec- 
tion of their government and I know that all of 
their wells are producers.” 

“How can you be sure they are,” Jack asked 
the manager of the Terrazas Company. 

“That is easy,” continued Mr. Richardson; 
“in the first place they were producing in the 
neighborhood of thirty thousand barrels up to 


THE ABANDONED GUSHERS 117 

the day they shut down and, in the second place, 
they must have oil because we have oil and the 
Chihuahua, has oil and we are all three of us lo- 
cated on and drawing from the same oil pool.” 

“I see,” said Jack; “a while ago you men- 
tioned that you were waiting for something to 
turn up.” 

4 4 I am. Firm dealing with Mexico ! ’ ’ boomed 
Mr. Richardson’s big voice decisively; 44 after 
Uncle Sam steps in, as he’s bound to do any 
minute now, and gets us our rights we’ll be 
able to reopen and not before.” 

4 4 What did I tell you, Jack?” interrogated 
his partner. 

4 4 It can’t come any too quick for me,” said 
Jack. 4 4 Well, I guess we’ll be vamoosing. 
Thanks for your kindness and the information, 
Mr. Richardson.” 

4 4 You didn’t tell me how you came to ride a- 
horseback down here instead of taking the train 
at Juarez,” interjected Mr. Richardson. 

4 4 We thought we stood a better show of get- 
ting through. Every day for the last three 
months I’ve read of one or more trains that 
have been dynamited somewhere in Mexico. 
And then Bill and I believed we could throw 


■ii 8 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


Lopear and his gang off the trail easier,” ex- 
plained Jack. 

“At that they were on our heels from the 
time we left Juarez until we left Urrutia, but I 
guess we shook them there,” Bill added. 

“You are boys after my own heart, and I’m 
proud to know you. Now you fellows drop 
around any time you have a mind to and be sure 
to let me know if there is anything I can do for 
you. You know we Americans have got to stick 
together down here or else we will all be stuck 
separately,” concluded Mr. Richardson, uncon- 
sciously paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin’s fa- 
mous saying. Then he added, “And — keep your 
eyes and ears open and your mouths shut. 
Adios. ’ 9 

The boys walked up as far as the German 
owned Chihuahua wells and .after watching 
them work for a while they then doubled back 
down the street until they came to the wells of 
the Mexican Consolidated Company. Just as 
Mr. Richardson had said, all was hustle and 
business at the German wells where fifty thou- 
sand barrels of crude oil were taken out every 
day, while at the Mexiccm Consolidated not a 
pump was going. 


THE ABANDONED GUSHERS 119 

‘ ‘ Manana ! 9 9 clamored J ack in disgust. (Man- 
ana is pronounced mai^yan'-a and is the Span- 
ish word for tomorrow. It is the answer you al- 
ways get when you want a Mexican to do any- 
thing for you. It is always to-morrow with 
him.) 

“Pd be glad of the chanst to manana some 
of these crooked greasers with the butt of my 
.45 V 9 chipped in Bill, as he looked at the idle 
wells, with crude oil selling at three dollars a 
barrel. 

Of the seventeen wells belonging to this com- 
pany, ten, as Mr. Heaton had been informed and 
Mr. Richardson had said, was current gossip, 
had been sold to a Mexican government official, 
but it was evident at first glance that the alleged 
new owner had not attempted to work them. 

In front of the inevitable shack which served 
as an office for the Mexican Consolidated , sat 
an ancient Mexican with a corrugated face in 
the shade of a huge sombrero. The latter is the 
chief part of the clothing equipment of the na- 
tive and so the rest of his clothes, if such they 
can be called, and his flat, bare feet doesn’t 
matter. The boys took him for the watchman. 

Bill asked him in Mex if the manager or any- 


120 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


one else who could give them some information, 
was in. The hangover of an earlier generation 
grunted, shook his head and became as immobile 
as a piece of Mexican statuary. Then Jack 
wanted to know if they might look over the 
wells. He finally elicited the intelligence from 
the alternate parallel ridges under the sombrero 
that in order to do so they would have to get 
a pass signed by some officer of the Company. 

After more juggling with the Spanish lan- 
guage in which Jack managed to keep three or 
four words in the air at the same time, he 
learned that there was no official of the Com- 
pany nearer than Mexico City who could sign 
a pass. Then Jack changed his tactics. He had 
frequently found that a piece of money was the 
equivalent of the best pass ever written. He 
gave a peso, that is, a dollar, to the admixture 
of the Spanish and Aztec races on which the 
great sombrero rested, and explained as he 
pressed the iron man into his palm that they 
were extremely desirous of taking a look at the 
wells. 

The old Mexican, in the shade of his som- 
brero, fingered the peso lovingly and tried his 
level best to return it to Jack, but at the critical 


THE ABANDONED GUSHERS 12 i 


moment his will power failed him and he put 
the peso, together with his conscience, in his 
pocket and motioned them to go ahead. Thus 
doth a little filthy lucre often contaminate the 
morals of an otherwise perfectly good Mexican. 
(And sometimes even an American will fall by 
the wayside when he is likewise tempted.) 

The seventeen wells of the Consolidated were 
located roughly in the form of a triangle with 
the office at the apex nearest the street. The 
boys stopped under the rigging over the first 
one. A rough shack had been built at the base 
of the derrick for the purpose of housing the 
machinery which pumps the oil from the wells. 
Curiously enough, the pumping machinery had 
been removed, but the well had been driven and 
tubed and it was clear that it had been a pro- 
ducer in its day. 

“You see, Bill, ’ ’ explained Jack, “oil sands 
which produce in paying quantities may be 
found anywhere from seventy-five feet to five 
thousand feet below the surface of the earth, 
the depth of course depending on where the field 
is located. The average well is from a thousand 
eight hundred to three thousand four hundred 
feet in depth, but I should say from the height 


122 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


of the derricks, which, with the exception of that 
one over there, are about seventy feet, that these 
wells are about twenty-five hundred feet deep. 

“For the sake of test purposes wells here, 
however, have been drilled to much greater 
depths, the deepest one ever drilled being over 
seven thousand feet. It may interest you, Bill, 
to know that after a certain depth is reached in 
drilling, the temperature of the interior of the 
earth increases at the rate of about one degree 
Fahrenheit for every ninety-five feet you go 
down. In a six thousand foot well the tempera- 
ture has been found to be about 144 degrees 
Fahrenheit. That’s the reason why some oils 
as they come from the wells are so hot.” 

“What’s this Fair-en-ze-hotter you high- 
brows are always spoutin’ about,” inquired Bill, 
who had heard the word used in connection with 
temperature but could never quite make out 
what it had to do with it. 

4 4 The temperature of a body, that is, its de- 
gree of heat, is, as you know, Bill, measured 
by a thermometer. Now, a thermometer must 
have a scale so that the differences in tempera- 
ture can be read. The scale we use for all or- 


THE ABANDONED GUSHERS 123 

dinary purposes was gotten np by Fahrenheit , 
a German ” 

4 4 Then no right thinkin’ American ought to 
use it,” broke in patriotic Bill. 

J ack laughed. 1 6 Why Fahrenheit ’s been dead 
ever since 1736, so I guess we won’t be con- 
taminated by Kultur-Kampf if we look at a 
Fahrenheit thermometer to see how hot or cold 
it is,” he rejoined. 

4 ‘But as I was going to say the boiling point 
on a Fahrenheit scale is 212 degrees plus, and 
the freezing point is 32 degrees plus.” 

“I guess I get you,” and Bill blinked his blue 
eyes blankly. 

“In drilling the wells an oil cou/ntry oufit is 
used, and this consists of one of these derricks, 
the drilling machinery, and an oil engine, or a 
steam boiler and engine, to supply the power 
for operating the latter. The machinery com- 
prises a heavy steel drilling bit, or spudding bit, 
as it is called, and this is attached to one end of 
the line, or cable, which runs over that crown 
pulley up there on top of the derrick. 

“The other end of this long cable is wound 
on a cable reel at the bottom here of the rig. A 
jerk line is attached to the wrist pin of the main 


124 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

driving cranh-shaft and the other end is fixed to 
a spudding shoe on the cable near the reel. As 
the crankshaft is turned around by the oil, or 
steam engine it jerks the cable back and forth 
and this makes the spudding bit raise up and 
then lets it drop like a trip hammer. 

“As the hole gets deeper, the cable is gradu- 
ally unwound from the reel, or bull wheel shaft 
as the drillers call it, and this allows the spud- 
ding bit to be lowered into the well. After the 
well has been successfully started in this fash- 
ion the jerk-line is taken off and one end of a 
walking beam is fixed to the wrist pin of the 
main driving shaft, and a sand line is run from 
another reel up and over that pulley you see 
there, near the top of the derrick, and down 
through a hole in the other end of the walking 
beam ; to the end of this line is fixed a sand or 
mud scow , as it is called. 

“The spudding bit is used only for boring 
through the hard rock formation and when sand 
is reached the mud scow must, of course, be 
used instead of the spudding bit. This mud 
scow is a combined drilling tool and sand pump. 
Here’s one now. You see, Bill, it is simply a 
long, narrow bucket in which the sand is 


THE ABANDONED GUSHERS 12 ? 

scooped out and when the scow line is reeled up, 
the mud scow is hauled to the surface and the 
sand or mud is dumped out. 

“After a well is drilled it must have soiqe 
kind of a casing or tubing put in it. Very often 
it is found necessary to drive the wrought iron 
pipe, or tubing , which is from four and one-half 
to ten inches in diameter, after the well has 
been drilled to receive it. Down here in Chihua- 
hua the earth formation has very little rock in 
it, the formation all the way down from the sur- 
face of the earth to the oil bearing stratum be- 
ing composed chiefly o*f layers, or strata , of 
clay and quicksand. That’s the reason so many 
of these drilling rigs have hydraulic rotary rigs 
combined with them. 

‘ ‘ The well, after it is drilled, is tubed by means 
of the spudding attachments, and this is done 
by driving the pipe into- the well by drive clamps 
which are made fast to the bit stem 

“I’ve learned something I didn’t know be- 
fore,” said Bill when Jack had gotten thus far 
with his explanation of how oil wells are drilled. 
“If you and me stick together much longer. 
Jack, I’ll be one of them eddicated guys too, 
won’t I?” 


126 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


“You’re educated now, Bill, for you know 
more about useful things than nine-tenths of 
those tinhorns back in New York. What you 
know is worth everything, especially to me and 
Uncle Sam, and what they know isn’t worth a 
whoop to themselves or anybody else.” 

“Gee, I must be some smart guy to get a 
boost like this, ’ ’ thought Bill. “Go on and tell 
me some more,” he insisted. 

“When the drill reaches pay-sand the well 
may gush freely of its own accord, that is, oil 
will be thrown from it like water from an arte- 
sian well, or if not it has to be shot. By this, I 
mean that some nitro-glycerine or dynamite 
must be detonated in the sand in order to make 
it flow freely. This explosion shatters and 
loosens the oil rock and this, in consequence, 
permits the oil and gas to flow more freely. 

4 ‘ The well is then tubed and the oil and water 
are pumped to the surface by means of valves 
in the working barrel which is on the lower end 
of the tubing just as it is in an ordinary well- 
water pump. These valves are operated by 
what are known as sucker rods and these pass 
through the tubing to the bottom of the well; 
the oil and water are lifted through the spaces 


THE ABANDONED GUSHERS 127 

between the sucker rods and the inside of the 
well tubing. 

“The crude oil is pumped into storage tanks 
and from there it is carried in tank cars to the 
refiners. The crude oil coming from the wells 
in Mexico is shipped chiefly to the United States 
where it is used for fuel principally, but lubri- 
cating oils are also obtained from it which are 
of a very good grade, and it also contains a 
high percentage of sulphur, salt and wax. 

“Now, you see, Bill, although all of these 
wells have been tubed, there ’s no pumping ma- 
chinery, which goes to show that it has been 
taken out, though some of them may have been 
gushers . Do you see this valve-cock here?” 
Jack continued; “if these wells are operative 
there should be a flow of oil when we turn it on. ” 

Jack and Bill turned the wheel of the valve 
on, but to their expectant eyes came no flow of 
oil. 

“That’s funny,” commented Bill, “because 
Mr. Richardson said these wells were opera- 
tive.” 

“Not funny at all,” retorted Jack in disgust. 
‘ ‘ That ’s just what ’s to be expected. These wells 
have been tampered with in some way so that 


128 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


no oil can come up through the tubing. Now 
what I propose is that we come hack here to- 
night and see if we can’t remove the tampering 
with my little blasting outfit. I thought it 
might come in handy and now we’ll have a 
chance to see what we shall see.” 

About one o ’clock that night, armed with their 
six-guns and carrying their flash lamps and 
blasting outfit, the boys crept stealthily around 
in back of the Mexican Consolidated wells and 
over to the one they had tried out the preceding 
day. Once inside the rig shack they felt safe 
and Jack laid out the apparatus by which he 
hoped to prove the wells to be producers. 

The evening before he had cut a hole in the 
end of a stick of dynamite, with his pocket- 
knife, large enough to take a priming cap, 
and connected the latter with a flexible connect- 
ing wire, which was at least a thousand feet 
long. Now under the light of Bill’s flash lamp 
he connected the wire to the magneto. Next he 
unscrewed one of the cap screws from the cas- 
ing cap, which latter is screwed on the head of 
the casing or tubing, and carefully lowered the 
stick of dynamite down into the tube by the 
wires. 


THE ABANDONED GUSHERS 129 

Finally it came to a stop at what he estimated 
to be about five hundred feet below the earth’s 
surface. Taking the blasting machine out of the 
shack and away from the well to a goodly dis- 
tance, he set it on the ground. Then he sud- 
denly pushed down on the handle of the ma- 
chine. At the same instant they heard a dull 
explosion and the boys quickly ran to the well 
again. To their great delight they saw a thick, 
black oily liquid spurting up through the hole 
in the cap on the well tube. The stream of crude 
oil shot up to a height of ten feet or more and 
they could see that there was a very consider- 
able pressure back of it. 

Jack had discovered the secret of opening 
the wells of the Mexican Consolidated. Quick- 
ly Bill screwed the cap-screw back in its place 
again, but it took all of his strength and skill 
to do it against the pressure of the oil, and then, 
not until he was soaked with crude oil from head 
to foot. 

“If me Harlem frien’s could only see me 
now!” he wailed. 

“Good boy, Bill,” encouraged Jack, and with 
that they returned to their room well satisfied 
with their night ’s work. 


CHAPTER VIII 


SENOR LOPEZ, BANDIT AND PROMOTER. 

T HE next morning the boy’s spirits were 
as elevated as the proverbial goose, and 
all because of the successful outcome of their 
adventure the night before in starting the Mexi- 
can Consolidated well to flowing, for it proved 
that Jack’s surmises had again been correct. 
They knew now that to reopen the other wells 
which the company owned or should own and 
which Senor Lopez had made inoperative, it 
would only be necessary to use a little dynamite 
and shoot them as they had done with the one 
the preceding night. 

“What do you think that well was plugged 
up with,” Jack wanted to know. 

“Nothin’ more, I suppose, than a block of 
wood,” replied Bill; “but it wouldn’t surprise 
me if the force of the explosion ripped out a 
length of the tubin’. If we have to do it again 
130 


LOPEZ, BANDIT AND PROMOTER 131 

we don’t want to use more than half-a-stick of 
dynamite. ’ ’ 

‘ Tf it was only a wooden plug in the tubing, 
it would act like a projectile in the barrel of a 
gun, and simply blow down into the pool, 9 ’ was 
Jack’s idea. “At any rate we know what to 
do to get oil from the other wells. ’ ’ 

There were still several problems confronting 
Jack — I say Jack, because he usually did the 
thinking — and while these problems were not 
such a burden on his mind as the one of pro- 
ducing oil from a well that was supposed to be 
dead, at the same time he knew that his other 
propositions would be difficult enough of solu- 
tion. 

The first of these was to find out if the ten 
wells that were shut down had really been sold 
to a Mexican official ; second, if so, how he could 
get the Consolidated to buy them back again. 
Aye, here ivas the rub for as the head office of 
the Company was in Mexico City, it looked to 
Jack as if he’d have to go on down there and it 
seemed to him as if this would result in nothing 
more than a wild goose chase. The third and 
last problem that confronted him was how to 
make the Company work the wells when they got 


132 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

them back and into operative shape. Verily it 
was a man’s job. 

Puzzle his brain as he would, Jack could not 
figure out any reasonable way for doing any of 
these things. When it came to fighting he felt 
he could compete with Germans, Mexicans or 
any other nationality and give a fair account of 
himself, but he had to admit that what he didn’t 
know about business and bunco-business at that, 
would fill a book as large as Webster’s un- 
abridged dictionary. Further, to complicate 
matters, he had the alleged Mexican laws to con- 
tend with. 

He knew it would be of no use to talk these 
momentous matters over with Bill, for the lat- 
ter’s brain was not one of the caliber that func- 
tioned well when it came to working out plots 
and counter-plots, especially where business 
matters were involved. True, every once in a 
while, a clever bit of strategem would flash 
across the dark recesses of the convoluted mass 
that occupied his cranium, as, for instance, 
when he had Jack climb out of the window onto 
the roof to get the drop on the Bad Hombre. 
On the other hand they were never due to 
any deep, consecutive thought on his part, but 


LOPEZ, BANDIT AND PROMOTER 133 

they came, rather, as though they were prompt- 
ed by cunning instinct like the spontaneous im- 
pulse that is seen in some animals, such as the 
raccoon. BilPs great forte lay in the fact that 
he was absolutely unafraid to take punishment 
of any kind and that his brain, eyes and hands 
were perfectly coordinated, which made him 
very expert with his hands, and even better with 
a gun, whatever its caliber might be. 

But Bill was a good listener and, notwith- 
standing the foregoing characteristics relating 
to his pal’s mind, Jack very often went into de- 
tails in telling him his ideas and schemes not 
because he could help out much but to concen- 
trate his own thoughts and bring them to a fo- 
cus. 

In this, Jack was like Abraham Lincoln, as the 
following incident shows: When Lincoln was 
President and the Civil War was on he was 
constantly confronted with staggering prob- 
lems. At one stage when he was wrestling with 
a particularly knotty affair, instead of consult- 
ing with the members of his cabinet, or talking 
it over with his close personal advisers, he sent 
a wire to an old friend of his back home at 
Springfield, 111., to come to Washington. 


134 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

This man, so the story goes, was one of very 
ordinary intelligence, and small learning and 
when he got Lincoln’s message he was surprised 
beyond measure for he knew that he couldn’t 
be of the slightest help to him. When he 
reached the White House, Lincoln greeted him 
heartily and then he began to talk and to pace 
the floor. After the President had finished his 
discourse, which lasted upwards of an hour, 
and during which time his friend had not spoken 
a word, he bade him good-by. All that Lin- 
coln wanted to do was to think out loud. To do 
this he had to have a good listener, for when 
thoughts are put into spoken words they crys- 
tallize into a very close approximation of some- 
thing tangible. 

In the same way Jack often talked to Bill, 
but what he was in need of now was helpful ad- 
vice and so he and Bill went over to the office of 
Terrazas Petroleum Company to see Mr. Rich- 
ardson. 

The big-bodied, whole-souled manager of the 
Terrazas greeted them as cordially as before, 
but it was clear to the boys that he was laboring 
under a strain of some kind. Jack told him 
how he had opened up one of the wells by shoot - 


LOPEZ, BANDIT AND PROMOTER 135 

ing it with a stick of dynamite the night before, 
much to Mr. Richardson’s astonishment. 

‘ 6 I have never heard of anything quite as dar- 
ing as that before/ ’ he exclaimed, patting Jack 
on the back; “ that’s the way to do it, my boy. 
You’ll get along in the world all right for you 
have the kind of stuff in you that Americans are 
made of. It is clear that Senor Lopez thought 
he could fool everybody by plugging up the 
wells but when he ran up against you boys he 
bucked the tiger once too often. And now, boys, 
I ’ll tell you something that will make your eyes 
bug out,” he added, his genial face taking on 
the serious aspect and set look it had when they 
came in. 

“I’m all ears, Mr. Richardson,” said Jack. 

“Shoot!” said Bill. 

“Late last night I got a wire in code from our 
home office which stated that diplomatic rela- 
tions might be broken off with Mexico by the 
United States at any minute. It also contained 
the information that it was only a matter of 
a day or so before the United States would 
send troops into Mexico, and it advised me to 
rush my men out as quickly as I could and to 
get out myself. Now, boys, I wouldn’t be hold- 


136 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

ing this job to-day if I had been a quitter and 
I ’m not going to lay down now. 

‘ ‘As soon as I decoded that wire I made up my 
mind that let come what may, I am going to 
.stick right here and protect our property from 
these greasers as long as there’s a breath of 
life in me. I have been out and talked it over 
w T ith the boys who work here, about fifty all told, 
and they agreed to a man to stay here with me 
and put up a fight if they have to. 

“The reason, though, that I am telling you 
this is to warn you to go now. Take my ad- 
vice and jump on the next north-bound train, 
which is due in half an hour, and make tracks 
for El Paso, because when trouble breaks out 
there is likely to be a general massacre here. 
With your nerve you may get across the Rio 
Crrande alive ! ’ ’ 

“Mr. Richardson, I’m much obliged to you 
for the advice — more than I can possibly tell 
you,” replied Jack slowly; “but there are sev- 
eral reasons why I can’t accept it. First of all, 
my father’s fortune is invested in these wells 
down here and, the way things stand at present, 
I’ve got to stay right here on the ground or else 
he’ll lose it. Second, when we came into this 


LOPEZ, BANDIT AND PROMOTER 137 

country, I knew that I was talking my life in my 
hands. But I’ve done that same thing before 
and I came out practically unscathed, so I’m 
willing to take the chance again. 

“Third, I’m a fair shot with a six-gun and 
with a rifle and I guess if you and your men in- 
tend to stick here in the face of the odds against 
you that I’d kind of like to stay too and help 
you by doing my bit. And unless I’m very 
much mistaken that goes for Bill here, too.” 

“You’re shoutin’ it does,” replied his pal, 
who was wondering while Jack was talking 
where he came in. “I never learned much in 
the six weeks I went to school, Mr. Richardson, 
but there’s two things I always done and that’s 
to treat a pal on the level and the other is never 
to show a yellow streak. I ’m with youse to the 
limit, see!” 

“It is the old spirit of ’76 again!” boomed 
Mr. Richardson, as he grasped the boys’ hands 
one after the other. “That is why the good old 
U. S. always has been and always will be the 
greatest nation on earth. That is why Germany 
couldn ’t beat us. Boys, I am proud to call you 
Americans ! ’ ’ 

“Since we are going to stay, we might just. 


138 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

as well go right along with the Consolidated 
matter. I came over to ask you, Mr. Richard- 
son, who the manager of the Consolidated is and 
if he is here on the ground or in Mexico City, ’ 9 
said Jack. 

‘ 4 He ought to be under the ground, ’ 9 muttered 
Bill with far more truth that he knew. 

“Senor Jose Lopez is the general manager, 
as well as the promoter of the Consolidated. 
He is here as a usual thing, but I don’t believe 
he is in town just now, at least I have not seen 
him for some little time.” 

“ We’ll go over and take another look around, 
anyway.” 

“All right, boys, but remember that we are 
on the ragged edge of a row, so watch your 
step for there is no telling what deviltry these 
ckolo boys will be up to now. I have instructed 
Mack, our engineer, to keep up steam from now 
on and at the first sign of trouble to blow the big 
whistle of the plant. That will be a signal for 
all Americans in this town to rally here armed 
to the teeth, and pronto!” 

The boys agreed that they would be right 
there at the first blast and then they meandered 
over to the office of the Mexican Consolidated 


LOPEZ, BANDIT AND PROMOTER 139 

and as the door was open, they casually took a 
look in. This time they spied some one and so 
they stepped inside. They were confronted by 
el dependiente, as a clerk is called in Spanish. 

“I want to see the manager of this she-bang,” 
said Jack bluntly. 

“Si, si Senor, step this way if you please,” 
replied the clerk most obligingly, for, know you, 
that the Mexicans are the politest people in the 
world when they are not sticking up Americans. 

He led the way through a hallway formed 
of rough lumber and stopped in front of a door 
on which was painted rudely : 


Senor Jose Lopez 
Manager 

PRIVATE 


“Your names please f” the sleek little clerk 
inquired suavely. 

“Never mind our names, sonny/ ’ blurted 
out Bill; “just tell Senor Lopez that a couple of 
old friends of his want to see him.” 

‘ 1 Si, si Senor, ’ 9 said the clerk as he held up his 
left hand wide open to signal them to wait a mo- 


Ho JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

ment, — a sign used by all Spanish speaking 
folks, — and at the same time knocking on the 
door with his right. 

Bill was for pulling some of that rough stuff 
of his and going right in without being invited 
but Jack held him back, admonished him to “cut 
it out and act decent-like. ’ ’ The door was 
slightly opened and they heard a confused mur- 
mur of voices and shortly the clerk opened it 
and bade them enter with a courteous bow. 
They did so with alacrity for fear that Senor 
Lopez might change his mind. They took in the 
room, its furnishings and the man who was its 
sole occupant, at a glance. 

To the right of the window, from which seven 
wells could be seen, was a large mahogany desk, 
such as you would find in every office in the 
down town district in New York, but which 
seemed wholly out of keeping in this shack in 
the Terrazas oil fields. Other articles of furni- 
ture were in keeping with the desk and seated 
at the latter in a swivel chair with his back 
toward them was the man they were particu- 
larly anxious to see. As the clerk pulled the 
door shut after him the man at the desk swung 
round. 


LOPEZ, BANDIT AND PROMOTER 141 

“You want to see me?” lie asked, looking at 
them through narrowed eyes. It was then that 
Jack had the shock of his life, for the man be- 
fore them was none other than old Lopear, the 
second-story worker and safe blower of Jack’s 
Montclair experience and the train dynamitard 
of the San Bias episode. There sat the identical 
villain, whose slashed forehead and shorn-off 
ear showed more prominently than ever now 
that he had his hat off, looking at them coolly, 
exactly as if he had never before this moment 
set eyes upon them. 

During his brief struggle with him in Mont- 
clair Jack had learned that the fellow was no 
coward and now he had to give him credit for 
his coolness. Evidently old Lopear, or, to give 
him the benefit of his more high-toned name, or 
alias, as Mr. Richardson had tipped them off, 
Senor Jose Lopez, was a man who would stop 
at nothing to gain his ends. He was certainly 
a genius in his line which was one of crime. In 
New York he descended to the depths of a com- 
mon crook, while here in Mexico he ascended to 
the pinnacle of a promoter ; while in between his 
various other activities he headed a gang of 
train dynamitards. 


142 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

“I guess we know each other pretty well by 
this time, Lopez,’ ’ said Jack, looking him 
straight in the eye, and so we won’t need any 
introduction. ’ ’ 

“On the contrary,” replied this amazing 
scoundrel, “I cannot recollect of our ever hav- 
ing met before and you have the advantage of 
me in. knowing my name.” 

Bill was all attention for it looked to him as 
if he was standing face to face with Old Sleuth 
Adventure , and he wanted to be sure that he 
didn’t let the old romancer get away. But ad- 
venture is the strangest bedfellow in the world, 
for the harder you look for it the less likely 
you are to find it and when you expect it the 
least that is when it suddenly looms up before 
you and invites your attention. If then you 
keep your wits about you and follow where it 
leads, you will see a phase of the world that is 
reserved for the favored few, but if you have to 
think twice, what would have been an adventure 
changes into a mere commonplace. 

Senor Lopez shook his head as one who was 
striving to remember, but what he was really 
doing was trying to forget. Bill had an idea of 
hurrying up old Adventure by the use of his 


LOPEZ, BANDIT AND PROMOTER 143 

six-gun, but as yet there was nothing to war- 
rant it. 

“Then perhaps the mention of a person who 
calls himself the Bad Hombre of Chilili may 
serve to refresh your mind, ,, persisted Jack, 
who was determined to make the fellow admit 
that he knew them. 

Again Senor Lopez shook his head. “I am 
very poor at remembering names and faces,” 
he smiled deprecatingly. 

“Then maybe you can remember events bet- 
ter,” continued Jack with downright Yankee 
perseverance; “do you recall a certain pas- 
senger train that was blown up near San Bias 
three nights ago 1 9 9 

“I may have read about it in the paper but 
there are so many trains dynamited in Mexico 
at the present time it would be hard, I imagine, 
for one to keep them all in mind.” 

“Right-o,” grunted Bill. 

“This irrelevant talk has gone far enough. 
Now will you be good enough to give me your 
names and state your business. As you can 
see” — he pointed to a pile of letters on his 
desk — “I am a busy man.” 

Jack was dumfounded at the fellow’s show 


144 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

of assurance. Could it be that there were two 
men who bore identical disfiguring marks on 
their heads, one of whom was in the States and 
the other in Mexico? It was posssible but not 
probable. Not once had the wily greaser batted 
an eye at the mention of his crimes but, at that, 
those that Jack knew about may have been 
merely minor ones which he had in consequence 
entirely forgotten. 

As you well know I am Jack Heaton, son of 
Mr. Heaton who owns a hundred thousand dol- 
lars worth of stock in the Consolidated. This 
is my partner, Mr. Adams.” 

‘ 4 Will you be seated, young gentlemen?” po- 
litely inquired Senor Lopez, drawing up a 
couple of chairs. 

4 ‘ Thanks,” said Jack coldly, “but I guess 
we had better transact our business standing. 
Now to get down to cases, you people claim 
that the oil supply of your wells is exhausted 
and that for this reason you sold ten of them 
to some Mexican official; then you offered to 
buy back my father ’s stock at a dead loss to him 
of ninety thousand dollars. 

“Failing in this, you personally went to 
Montclair, broke into our house in the dead 


LOPEZ, BANDIT AND PROMOTER 145 

of night, blew open the safe and all but got away 
with his certificates. Just as luck would have 
it, I happened to be at home and balked you in 
that crime. Escaping from the police you have 
repeatedly tried to kill me and my partner 
here, to keep us from reaching Terrazas. 

4 4 Now that we Ye here, Lopear — Lopez, I 
mean — there ’s no use in your trying to pull this 
r tuff that we Ye strangers to you. What ’s more, 
I know for a positive fact that the wells of the 
Mexican Consolidated are 0 . K. in every re- 
spect, and that the sale or transfer of those 
ten wells was illegal and done to defraud the 
American stockholders. Now what I want to 
know is what you intend to do about it?” 

“Yes, that’s what we want to know,” Bill 
backed him up. 

During this accusation Jack could see that 
however sure Senor Lopez might feel of his 
ground he did not relish the things that were 
being said to and about him. At other times 
and places he would have made answer with 
his knife, but not here at Terrazas, where he 
was well known to everybody in town and al- 
ways posed as a high-toned and legitimate pro- 
moter. 


146 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

“I say, what are yon going to do about it?” 
Jack vociferously reiterated. 

“Nothing!” replied Lopez, bringing his fist 
down on his desk with a thump that made the 
papers jump. “In the first place you come into 
my office and insult me and in the second place 
you make statements that are absolutely false. 
I have never seen either of you before and I 
could have you sent to prison for the slander- 
ous statements you have made. The officers of 
the Consolidated sold the ten wells because the 
oil source is exhausted — exhausted, I tell you ! ’ y 

“Hold on a minute there,” cried Jack, “how 
do you account for the fact that the Chihuahua 
wells and the Terrazas wells are producers 
while yours are not. You know and I know 
that all three of the companies are drawing 
from the same pool.” 

“Who told you that?” Lopez demanded. 

“Mr. Richardson, of the Terrazas Com- 
pany,” Jack replied. 

“Then Senor Richardson is either misin- 
formed or else he wilfully lies!” fairly yelled 
Lopez. “Our wells are drawing from an en- 
tirely separate and distinct pool, I tell you, 
and that pool was exhausted over two months 


LOPEZ, BANDIT AND PROMOTER 147 

ago. Now get out; I haven ’t any more time to 
fool away on Americano boys like you!” 

i 4 When I go,” returned Jack, in a voice that 
carried conviction with it, “you’ve got to go 
with me and show me that the wells are dead 
before I’ll be convinced.” 

“ Yes, youVe got to show us; we’re from Mis- 
souri, we are,” chipped in Bill. 

‘ ‘ All right, I ’ll go with you if only to get rid 
of you” — Senor Lopez put on his panama, 
pulled it down on the side of his head so that 
it covered up the place where the top of his ear 
ought to have been, and the trio started for the 
wells. 

When they were outside the shack the ire of 
Senor Lopez subsided and he again assumed an 
air of cool confidence. 

“What well do you prefer to be convinced 
at, ’ ’ he asked nonchalantly. 

“Oh, that one over there will do,” answered 
Jack, just as indifferently, pointing to the one 
he had shot the night before. 

Once inside the rig-shack Lopez stopped. 

“Do you see that valve there,” he asked 
sneeringly, and as it had a six-inch wheel han- 
dle on it the boys had to admit they did. 


148 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

‘ 4 When the well was a gusher and I turned 
on that valve, the oil flowed in a constant stream 
from the pipe connected with it. Now when I 
turn on the valve there will be no flow of oil, 
because, as I have patiently explained to you 
before, the oil pool has been exhausted. 

With that he gripped the valve wheel and 
gave it a few turns counterclockwise. From 
the end of the pipe which projected into the res- 
ervoir tank came a gush of crude-oil that could 
not have failed to convince anyone but a man 
who could not see that the well was a live one. 

“Sancho Pancho!” bawled out Senor Lopez, 
or words even worse than these, astounded at 
the unexpected turn of affairs. 

‘ ‘ You see, Lopez, I knew what I was talking 
about/ ’ said Jack quietly; “and now I don’t 
mind letting you in on a little secret. Last 
night my partner here and I came over and 
after prospecting around we shot this well on 
our own account. You see, we knew how and 
where to strike oil when you, the manager of 
the Consolidated , didn’t know.” 

‘ ‘ Carranza ! ’ ’ howled Lopez. 

“Go ahead and take old Carranza’s name in 
vain, I don’t care,” laughed Jack. 


LOPEZ, BANDIT AND PROMOTER 149 

1 ‘You gringo dogs have crossed me once too 
often. For this dirty piece of business you 
shall suffer. You have tampered with the prop- 
erty of the Mexican Government and you shall 
rot in jail for it. I am going for the police 
now. ’ ’ 

It looked to Jack as if the Montclair tables 
would be turned and that down here in Ter- 
razas, Lopez would have the pleasure of seeing 
the handcuffs on him. He didn’t like the idea 
worth a cent. 

Bill had listened to about all that he could 
stand for and so he jumped in and took a hand. 
J amming the muzzle of his revolver into the di- 
gestive anatomy of the yeggman-manager-pro- 
moter he backed him out of the door of the 
shack. 

“Look here, you half-baked, yellow livered 
murderin ’ greaser. One more threat out of you 
and I ’ll pump so much lead into you your stom- 
ach will think you’ve swallowed a storage bat- 
tery. What’s more, you ain’t goin’ to tell the 
cops nothin’ because me and my pal here has 
got enough on you to hang you. Now git.” 
And with that he started Senor Lopez down 
the path toward the street. That worthy moved 


150 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

right along, pronto, with never a backward 
look. 

“Pm afraid youVe gone and done it,” said 
Jack. 

“Never you worry, Buddy,” Bill replied in 
his own defense; “that greaser may go and 
have us pinched now on general principles, but 
he ’d have done it anyway so what ’s the diff ? ’ ’ 

“Well, if it comes to a point where they’re 
going to arrest us, we’ll put up a fight rather 
than submit, because, as old Lopear said, — and 
he spoke the truth for once in his life, — we’d 
simply rot in jail waiting for Mexican justice. 
I’d prefer to rot in, six feet of earth.” 

“You’re right, Jack. When a greaser starts 
to talk about gettin’ the law down on you, why 
it’s time, I says, to get your arsenal ready for 
action.” 


CHAPTER IX 


“remember the alamo !” 

T HERE was more excitement in Terrazas 
that evening than there had been since the 
memorable day when oil had been struck sev- 
eral years before. But now it was of a differ- 
ent kind. Then there was wild joy among the 
populace, great feasts and much drinking, 
music and dancing, games, a bull-fight, and, to 
cap the climax, a blazing gusher illuminated the 
nights revelries by a crimson column of flame 
that shot up high in the air. 

Then, Americans had drilled for and discov- 
ered the oil that was to make Chihuahua the 
richest province in northern Mexico. Natur- 
ally the Americano was the Mexican’s best 
friend and the latter swore eternal allegiance 
to his white benefactor. But no one can forget 
a kindness quicker than a Mexican, or remem- 
ber a real or fancied wrong longer. They had 
long since lost sight of the fact that peon and 
151 


152 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

promoter alike had prospered only because of 
the initiative, energy and ability of the hardy 
men from the States who had brought their 
drilling rigs into these parts, with the sanction 
and under the protection of the Mexican Gov- 
ernment and made the earth cough up its price- 
less treasure of oil. Their one thought now was 
to freeze out the pioneers who had discovered 
and financed the Terrazas oil fields, and hog it 
all. 

To this end they had been working for 
months and had employed such open and ex- 
cessive violence against the Americans in Mex- 
ico, and occasionally in the border States, that 
Uncle Sam had entirely lost his patience and 
was even at that moment ready to cross the bor- 
der, and straighten his crooked neighbor up a 
bit by force of arms if necessary. 

It was clear that the Mexicans of Terrazas 
had heard the news of the approaching action of 
the United States not long after Mr. Richard- 
son received it, and that it had spread like 
wildfire all through the oil camp and the sur- 
rounding country. Crowds of frenzied Mexi- 
cans thronged the main street and above the 
noise and din could be heard the yells of “down 


“REMEMBER THE ALAMO!” 


153 

with the Americanos!” That there was d par- 
ticularly tough element in town ready to wipe 
out the few Americans was evidenced by the 
fact that even the women and girls were armed 
with clubs, knives, revolvers and rifles. 

Most of the American contingent had already 
gone over to the Terrazas plant as they knew 
it was safer to get under Mr. Richardson’s pro- 
tection as speedily as possible rather than to 
wait until the whistle blew. Whenever any one 
was seen on the streets he was hissed and hoot- 
ed at by the excited and enraged Mexicans and 
there were some attempts at gun-play but no 
one was hurt. To all intents it was a mob but 
yet it was clear that it was held in check by 
some power behind it — some leader in au- 
thority. 

An oil camp, like Terrazas, full of armed 
and maddened Mexicans is not a pleasing 
sight at any time and one which once seen could 
never be forgotten, for they presented a far 
more diabolical appearance than a band of ren- 
egade Apaches on the war-path. Much as the 
natives hated the Americans they feared them 
to some extent as well, because it had been their 
experience that when once attacked the Yan- 


154 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

kees would put up a desperate fight. Further, 
it mystified their simple minds why steam was 
kept up at the Terrazas plant and when an ig- 
norant person can’t understand the how and 
why of a thing he is usually afraid of it. 

Thus while the crowd made no concerted ef- 
fort to do actual bodily harm to the Americans 
as yet, their threatening manner showed what 
was to be expected of it if a spark were todched 
to the tinder. Like a few of the more ad- 
venturous Americans in Terrazas, Jack and 
Bill intended to stay at the hotel until the whis- 
tle blew for, as Bill said, the proprietor had 
made them pay in advance and they had to stay 
to get their money’s worth. They prepared for 
the night by buckling on their cartridge belts, 
their rifles at hand and their six-guns loose in 
their holsters. And so it was that they fell 
asleep with the hoarse shouts and wild cries 
of the greasers ringing in their ears. 

Past all belief they were not molested during 
the night and when they awoke from their fitful 
slumbers the first sounds to greet their ears 
were the confused yells of the rabble, though 
they were far less intense than the evening be- 
fore. When daylight came, a 1 glance out of their 


“REMEMBER THE ALAMO !” 155 


shuttered window showed the same surg- 
ing mass of humanity, a little more tired and a 
little less energetic than they were when they 
had started out, and with the rising sun came 
the glint of its rays reflected from the steel of 
many weapons. 

They concluded they would not need any 
breakfast and after reconnoitering to make 
sure they were not being ambushed or hemmed 
in by an armed force they made their way out 
in safety. Steering clear of the main street, 
they followed the more unfrequented back 
streets that led to the rear of the Terrazas 
Company’ s plant. They were getting along 
famously and, doubtless, would have been high- 
ly successful in reaching this point of vantage 
without let or hindrance, had it not been for 
a lone greaser who staggered out of the rear 
door of a mescal shop into the narrow street. 

Spotting the boys with his bleary eyes, he 
stopped them and began to heap abuse upon 
them in fluent Spanish but without the lisping 
pronunciation which characterizes the native- 
born of Hispania. In other words he was a 
born greaser. At the same time he promis- 
cuously flourished his revolver in the air and 


156 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

by way of emphasis he occasionally fir6d it. 
The boys tried to pass on but he wouldn’t let 
them and it soon became clear that they would 
have to take the whip-hand or he would do 
them up. 

‘ 4 Here you, put up that gun, or you’ll hurt 
yourself with it!” growled Bill, who was now 
thoroughly peeved. 

By way of an answer the greaser pulled the 
trigger and a bullet whizzed perilously close to 
Bill’s ear. 

“I’ll be another one of those earless rab- 
bits like old Lopear if this guy keeps on much 
longer,” he added. 

“Well, give it to him then,” said Jack in 
English. 

True to his early training in the lots back 
of the gas-house, Bill did the thing that always 
came perfectly natural to him when he was 
opposed by physical man power. He caught the 
greaser square on the jaw with a straight arm 
jab that had the kick of a mule back of it. Mr. 
Abusive and Gun-Playing Mex then performed 
a series of curious evolutions which invariably 
follow the correct delivery of this blow. Both 
of his heavy-booted and spurred feet left the 


“REMEMBER THE ALAMO !” 


157 


ground and followed his head into space like a 
skyrocket — though he did not go quite as high ; 
his revolver flew one way and his sombrero 
the other, then he fell and in the twinkling of 
an eye his head was resting on the identical 
spot where his feet had stood. 

Bill’s experience had taught him that the 
greaser would be a sick man for the rest of the 
day and that his chances for disturbing the 
peace were practically zero. Without waiting 
for any one else to block their progress, the boys 
stepped over the prostrate form and hurried 
on to the Terrazas plant, the office of which 
they reached without further incident. There 
they found Mr. Richardson, his men and a few 
other Americans who had gathered together 
and were talking over ways and means to meet 
the impending trouble. The manager greeted 
them warmly. 

“ Hello, boys; I was beginning to think they 
had gotten you,” he said. 

“One of them almost got us,” replied Jack, 
“but the battle was short; only two blows were 
struck, the first when Bill struck the greaser 
and the other when the greaser struck the 
ground.” 


158 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

Bill grinned and the others laughed. 

“You should have stayed here with us last 
night by all means. I had no idea the natives 
would turn out so quickly. Well, we are mighty 
glad you are with us now. What luck did you 
fellows have with our friend Senor Lopez yes- 
terday? I saw him walking up the street look- 
ing pretty glum and I presumed you had inter- 
viewed him.” 

“We did, but to no purpose,” replied Jack 
dejectedly. “He pretended he had never seen 
us before and simply refused to do anything 
about the wells. And when we showed him 
there was oil a-plenty and told him how we 
had shot the well, he promptly flew off of the 
handle and threatened to have us arrested for 
tampering with what he called ‘ government 
property.’ ” 

“Cheer up, Jack,” said Mr. Richardson, 
calling the young oil prospector by his given 
name for the first time. This man and this boy 
had not known each other for more than twen- 
ty-four hours but now that they were in the face 
of grave danger there was a deep mutual feel- 
ing between them and it seemed to each that he 
had known the other always. 


“REMEMBER THE ALAMO!” 


159 


The manager didn’t take as kindly to Bill, for 
even in a rough country like this he seemed a 
trifle too crude. But it wasn’t Bill’s fault, for 
no one was more anxious than he to talk right 
and to do right. He was of a verity like crude 
oil in that he was the resultant stuff of all man- 
ner of substances and his parentage, the early 
loss of his father, his environment and his bat- 
tle with poverty had left him very mudli the 
same as when nature had laid him down in one 
of the hardest and most awfully smelly spots 
then known in New York, not even barring the 
Five Points and Hell’s Kitchen. 

Had he been refined by the same process ofl 
factional distillation that crude oils and Mont- 
clair boys are subjected to he would have stood 
up just as well under all the various tests by 
which these quite different products are stand- 
ardized. Bill was a fellow that you had to know 
to the core to be able to really like. Jack 
knew him for what he was. 

“As I was about to say,” went on Mr. Rich- 
ardson, “the reason that Senor Lopez was so 
infernally independent was because he, too, 
probably knew that intervention would soon be 
coming and that then he would be held ac- 


160 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


countable for nothing. The thing, though, that 
none of these greasers seem to realize is that' 
some day we may do more than we are planning 
now, and that then there will be many things 
they will be held accountable for. They have 
been anxiously waiting all night for news of our 
government’s action and the fools will be glad 
when it comes for the love of killing is born 
in them. When ” 

Mr. Richardson did not finish what he in- 
tended to say for at that instant the crowd 
around the telegraph office gave vent to a loud 
outburst of cheering and sombreros and bulletsi 
went flying through the air in their wild en- 
thusiasm. Came three vociferous shouts 
through the window, shouts that were easily 
translated into “ Death to the gringoes! Long 
live Mexico!” 

Their cry carried far and Mack, the engineer 
at the power house, pulled down hard on the 
cord of the big work whistle and its bellowing 
blast drowned out all the other sounds made by 
human throats for the time being. At the first 
warning signal of the whistle the few Ameri- 
cans remaining outside of the Terrazas plant 
made their circuitous way toward it as speedily 


REMEMBER THE ALAMO!” 161 


as they could and the crack of revolvers and of 
rifles told the boys that skirmishes were already 
under way between the Americans and the Mexi- 
cans. Within ten minutes every American in 
town was accounted for by Mr. Richardson and 
he bolted the doors of the office. He saw to it 
that every mother’s son of them had his rifle, 
revolvers and a full quota. of ammunition. 

He snatched up his own rifle and then shout- 
ed, “ All right boys, follow me.” 

Mr. Richardson led the little company into 
the next room ; there he kicked aside a rug and 
this disclosed to view a large trap door that set 
flush in the floor. With the help of one of his 
men he lifted it up and the boys discovered 
that it opened into a shallow tunnel about three 
feet wide and four feet deep. 

One by one the men followed the manager 
and dropped into the tunnel. He and some of 
his men carried flash-lights and they made their 
way at a rapid pace through the underground 
passage although it was necessary for them to 
walk with their backs bent almost double in or- 
der to keep from striking the roof of it. Mack 
and a couple of his firemen brought up in the 


162 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


rear and as they were the last to go through the 
trap door they bolted it down after them. 

After the manager had led the way for the 
length of a city block, or so it seemed to J ack, 
in this awkward and tiresome fashion, the tun- 
nel came to an abrupt end. Mr. Richardson 
stopped and stood nearly erect now, for there 
was more headroom above him, and here an- 
other trap door was exposed to view. Putting 
his big shoulder against it he forced it up and 
with the aid of Jack and Bill who used their 
guns as levers, the door opened easily since it 
was balanced, or nearly so, by a weight above. 
The manager nimbly raised himself through the 
opening to the upper floor and then he gave each 
of the boys a hand and they in turn helped the 
others behind them. All were soon through and 
Mack and his men bolted down the door. 

The boys found they were in a large room 
and the only light which penetrated it came 
through narrow slits a couple of feet higher 
than a man’s head and these were equally 
spaced in the surrounding walls. Along the 
bottom of the walls ran a broad step so that 
a dozen men could stand on it and fire out of 
the loopholes above, for such the openings were. 


“REMEMBER THE ALAMO!” 163 

The walls of this fortalice were made of ’dobe 
and easily ten feet thick, while in the center of 
it was a gigantic steel tank. 

“This place, boys, was built by our Company 
to protect our reservoir tanks in just such a mob 
crisis as we are now facing. Fortunately for us 
we have not been pumping oil for the past 
month or so and as the tank is empty luck is 
with us, ’ ’ explained Mr. Richardson. 

“As you will see, if you look out of the loop- 
holes, this building is placed in the exact center 
of a circle on whose circumference our wells set. 
From the loopholes every well can be plainly 
seen and at the same time we can protect any 
one or all of them should it be necessary for 
us to do so. 

“This ladder you see here leads up to the 
roof and in case we are driven from our posi- 
tion here we can make a last stand there. Now 
then for the sake of teamwork we have got to 
choose a leader that all of you men have confi- 
dence in and one you will obey implicitly. Who 
shall it be?” 

As with a single voice the men shouted, 
“Richardson!” 

To show his appreciation the oil plant man- 


164 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

ager smiled his big, genial smile and said simp- 
ly, 4 ‘ All right, men. Thanks. ’ ’ 

Then to his own men he explained that Jack 
and Bill, although “mere kids’ ’ as he called 
them, had been through the great World War 
and had seen actual fighting service. That they 
had ridden from Juarez in saddles and had suc- 
cessfully fought off bandits, thirst and every- 
thing for which Mexico is noted. 

“Three cheers for Jack Heaton and Bill 
Adams ! ’ 9 came ringing from the men ’s throats, 
and they were unanimously named as Captain 
Richardson ’s lieutenants. 

Although our government was not planning 
war but merely a punitive expedition, a minia- 
ture war existed in Terrazas. 

The men were split up into two sections, Jack 
being in command of one and Bill of the other. 
They were then assigned to posts at the loop- 
holes so that all four sides of the ’dobe were 
protected. Half a dozen men who were crack- 
shots were picked out for sniper’s duty on the 
roof, while four more men were detailed to look 
after the wounded, should there be any, and two 
more volunteered for cook’s duty, for if, as Na- 
poleon said, an army marches on its stomach. 


“REMEMBER THE ALAMO!” 165 

it is none the less true that it fights on its stom- 
ach. 

Scarcely had these preparations for siege 
been completed when one of the snipers on the 
roof shouted down that the Mexicans had been 
mobilized and were getting ready to attack the 
office shack of the Terrazas Compmy which 
Captain Richardson and his men had just left. 

‘ ‘ So much the better for us, ’ ’ said the leader. 
“ There will be just that much more powder 
wasted by the greasers.” 

About half of the attacking party took up a 
position in front of the office and the remainder 
fell back to one side of the rear of it. Then a 
volley was fired through the front wall of the 
shack. 

“The dubs think we’re in there and are goin’ 
to break our necks to get out of the back 
door,” yawped Bill; “wonder what they take us 
for — a lot of wooden Indians ? ’ ’ 

Since none of the Americans made their exit 
through the rear door to be shot down like dogs, 
as the leader of the Mexicans figured they 
would, the greasers fired volley after volley 
through the shack, firmly believing that the 
Americans were still in it. Hearing no cries, 


166 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


they battered in the door and made a grand rush 
to see who could get in first, but they were 
doomed to disappointment. 

Whoever the genius was that designed the 
Terrazas Company’s plant, he had put one over 
on the Mexicans, for the tunnel was a bit of 
engineering that no one except Captain Rich- 
ardson and two or three of his most trusted men 
knew the existence of. 

“I’ve made a big fizzle of it,” Jack said to 
Captain Richardson. 

“How so?” 

“What I should have done was to have plant- 
ed a couple of sticks of dynamite in the office be- 
fore we left, led the wires over here and con- 
nected them with my blasting machine. We 
could have blown them to — smithereens. ” 

“A good idea, Jack, but too late for execution 
in both senses. We will have to fight it out 
right here.” 

The Mexicans did not stay long around the 
office after they found the Americans were not 
there. Finding their quarry gone, they acted 
more like a drove of wild steers than a body of 
soldiers, but they did have a leader and they fol- 
lowed him. Even at that distance their leader, 


“REMEMBER THE ALAMO!” 167 

a small but rather heavy set greaser, was rec- 
ognized by Jack and Bill as the notorious Lop- 
ear, or Lopez. They saw him point toward their 
’dobe stronghold and with a hoarse yell the mob 
came forward pell-mell, brandishing knives, re- 
volvers and all manner of arms as they came on 
at a dead run. 

Soon the dull thud of bullets flattening against 
the outside of the thick walls could be heard like 
hail falling on a tiled roof. So far the defend- 
ers of the ’dobe post had not fired a shot. Un- 
der this rain of gunfire, aimless as it was, some 
of the men began to grow a little restless, for 
while they were skilled in the use of oil rigs, 
the business of warfare was out of their line. 
Captain Richardson walked up and down the 
lines with his tense, curt words of advice which 
inspired confidence. 

“ Steady, men!” he cried, 4 4 let Lopez ’ men 
waste all the lead they have a mind to. Wait 
until you can see the whites of their eyes and 
then let them have it.” 

The greasers under Lopez advanced steadily 
on the ’dobe until they were within twenty 
yards of it. Then from the loopholes on two 
sides there simultaneously blazed forth a solid 


168 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


sheet of flame and the oncoming ranks were re- 
duced by at least fifty men. Under the demor- 
alizing fire of the Americans, in spite of the 
superior numbers of the Mexicans, the latter 
might have been expected to break, and break 
they did, each and every coyote of them seeking 
the scant protection offered hy the loose build- 
ing materials which lay scattered around. At 
the command of Lopez they rallied and then de- 
ployed , that is, they spread out in a line which 
extended to the rear of the ’dobe. No sooner 
had they executed this maneuver than they were 
met by another raking fire, and again they broke 
and sought such scant shelter as they could 
find. 

The fire of the Mexicans had not, however, 
been entirely without effect, for inside of the 
9 dobe half-a-dozen defenders had either fallen 
mortally wounded or else were too badly hurt to 
carry on by bullets which had passed through 
the loopholes. But so far they had nothing to 
complain of and they felt their position was al- 
most impregnable. 

Throughout the long afternoon the Mexicans 
kept up a desultory firing which the Americans 


“REMEMBERv THE ALAMO!” 169 

returned with cold lead, aimed straight and cal- 
culated to kill. 

Toward evening Lopez ’ reduced force with- 
drew and Jack ran up on the roof to survey its 
position. As he looked around through a pair 
of binoculars, which Captain Richardson had 
handed him, whenever he leveled them in the di- 
rection of the German-owned wells he could see 
half-a-dozen fine parallel lines, but it was some 
time before he could make out what they were. 

The Germans had two oil drilling rigs whose 
derricks were higher by fifty feet than any of 
the others at Terrazas and they were located 
about three hundred feet apart. In following 
up these lines in the glass he observed that they 
came to an end at the extreme top of each der- 
rick. 

“That settles it!” he thought; “it’s a wire- 
less aerial and wherever you find an aerial 
there you’ll find a sending and receiving appa- 
ratus hooked up to it.” 

“Know anything about that wireless sta- 
tion over there?” he asked one of the sharp- 
shooters on the roof. 

“I know all about it,” the rifle-wizard re- 
plied; “it’s one of the most powerful stations 


i 7 o JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

in Mexico. It was put up during the Great War 
and was used as a signaling station between 
secret stations in the United States and Ger- 
man submarines.” 

“Is it in working order now!” further ques- 
tioned Jack. 

“Guess so,” replied his informant; “at least 
it was a week ago.” 

Jack scuttled down the ladder as fast as his 
legs would carry him and sought out Captain 
Richardson. 

“Captain, can I have six men!” he asked 
anxiously. “Fve just discovered that there’s 
a big German wireless station over at the 
Chihuahua wells. Now if I can get over there 
I can put a message through to El Paso and 
maybe we can get help. I’m an old wireless 
operator, you know. ’ ’ 

“You’re welcome to try it, my boy, but I 
doubt if you can get through their lines.” 

“I’ve been noticing all afternoon that there’s 
been very little fire from the west.side of the 
building and this evening it ceased altogether. 
I believe the Mexicans are withdrawing from 
that side and that they intend to attack us in 
force on the north side to-night. 


“REMEMBER THE ALAMO!” 171 

“Now what I propose is that, with a detail of 
six men, I will lower myself from the roof to 
the ground as soon as it is dark and try to reach 
the station. In the meantime you can inform 
your sharpshooters of my plan and they can 
cover our retreat in case we have to return. ,, 

As luck would have it, Jack and his detail 
were not discovered when they made their bold 
sortie that evening but they succeeded in reach- 
ing the wireless station only because their 
young lieutenant used all the craft of the 
trained soldier and the cunning of the Indian, 
scout. 

When they got alongside the concrete build- 
ing that housed the transmitting and the re- 
ceiving apparatus Jack could see that there was 
not much business going on, for a solitary op- 
erator had on a pair of head-phones and was 
working the key. Through the open window 
came the sizzling sounds of the quenched sparks 
between the disk electrodes as the high tension 
circuit was made and broken up into dots and 
dashes. 

What the operator was sending was beyond 
Jack’s ability to read, though the letters of the 
alphabet were clearly in International Morse . 


172 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

At first he thought that the message was going 
out in code , but then it occurred to him that 
since this was a German station the message 
was being sent in the horrible jargon which the 
Germans use for a language. 

Grasping his revolver by the muzzle Jack 
tapped softly on the door. The operator re- 
moved his head-phones, got up and opened the 
door, evidently expecting a friend. But what 
happened next he was never able to get quite 
clear in his mind, for Jack brought the heavy 
wooden grips of his pistol down on the fellow’s 
blond head with a resounding whack which in- 
dicated all too plainly that there was nobody 
home. He dropped in a heap on the floor. 

From his little light colored mustache care- 
fully upturned at the points in burlesque imi- 
tation of Mr. William Hohenzollem, it was plain 
that he was a German through and through. 
While his men trussed him up, Jack sent out 
the following message time and time again : 

‘ ‘ Terrazas, Chihuahua. Fifty Americans be- 
sieged by Mexican mob. Can hold out until 
morning. Send help. 


“ Captain Richardson-/ 9 


“REMEMBER THE ALAMO !” 


173 


Then he put on the head-phones and listened 
in and he was rewarded by a series of high- 
pitched buzzes which was the call letter of the 
American government station at El Paso. To 
the surprise and great joy of himself and his 
men he read: 

“Will notify cavalry at Corralitos and or- 
der them to proceed at once to your relief. 
Hang on; help coming. Headquarters, Fort 
Bliss, Tex. 

“Col. Wheeler, Commanding.” 

“Some kid, that Jack Heaton,” one of the 
well drillers said to the others of the detail. 

“He blew into this camp in the nick of time,” 
remarked another. And so on and so on until 
each one had accorded him a word of praise. 

“Now let’s get back to the ’dobe as fast as 
we can and deliver the news to Captain Rich- 
ardson,” said Jack quietly. 

Pursuing the same tactics they had used in 
making their way over to the station, which 
Jack had learned while he was at the front in 
France, they stealthily crept hack and on reach- 
ing it were quickly hoisted up to the roof. 


174 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

Jack had not taken the time to write the mes- 
sage down but gave it to Captain Richardson 
by word of mouth. 

“Bully! greatest piece of business I ever 
heard of!” ejaculated his superior officer. 

“Jack put ’er there! I ’ll hold your hawse 
for youse anytime,” was the way Bill ex- 
pressed his admiration for his pal. 

Captain Richardson called all of his men 
around him and told them what J ack had done, 
with the result that a small army was even then 
on its way to relieve them. The men simply 
went wild and no Mexican army that ever lived 
could have had any effect on them now. Their 
morale was raised sky-high. 

Scarcely had they received the news when a 
loud explosion within the ’dobe sent the mortar 
flying in every direction. The Mexicans had 
discovered the tunnel and the trap door lead- 
ing into the 9 dobe and had dynamited it. A 
part of one of the thick walls was blown away 
and in an instant the place was laid open to 
attack. 

“To the roof, men!” shouted Captain Rich- 
ardson. With a bound the defenders mounted 


“REMEMBER THE ALAMO !” 175 

to the roof, drawing their ladders up after 
them. Quickly ladders were placed against the 
sides of the ’dobe by the besiegers as soon as 
they had discovered that the Americans had 
taken to the roof. Time and again they were 
picked off by the sharp-shooters and Bill won 
Captain Richardson’s eternal friendship and 
whole-souled approval by the unfailing accu- 
racy with which he made every bullet topple off 
a Mexican. 

“Bill, you’re a wonder !” he said. 

“Thank you, sir,” replied Bill without stop- 
ping between shots. 

But there was no use ; the Mexicans had the 
advantage of outnumbering them a hundred to 
one and more and more of them reached the 
roof. 

Then was heard that memorable cry which 
never yet has failed to strike terror into the 
heart of the Mexican. 

“Remember the Alamo!” came Jack’s ring- 
ing voice. 

The cry was caught up by a score of throats 
and gave the men renewed courage and energy. 
They fought like tigers. Revolvers were fired 


1176 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

at point blank range with terrific effect and 
clubbed rifles smashed Mexican skulls like egg- 
shells. In less than one minute after Jack had 
given the cry, the roof was cleared of greasers . 


CHAPTER X 


WITH UNCLE SAM IN MEXICO 

T HIRTY miles away at Corralitos, Ameri- 
can cavalry and artillery went into camp 
bn that ever to be remembered evening when 
the little handful of Americans at Terrazas 
were waging a defense against the Mexicans, 
second only in history to that of the Alamo. 

Eighty-three years it has been since the old 
Texan fort of Alamo de Bexar, at San Antonio, 
was defended by a few Americans when it was 
attacked by a force of eight thousand Mexicans 
under Santa Anna, who was then the President 
of Mexico. The defenders put up a heroic fight 
but they were crushed by the superior forces 
of the enemy and slaughtered with great 
cruelty. 

Among their number were such noted fron- 
tiersmen and fighters as Davy Crockett, the 
great hunter of beasts and men, and Jim Bowie, 
inventor of the famous bowieknife. At the 


177 


178 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

time of the attack, Bowie was confined to his 
bed in one of the rooms wfith consumption; 
when the Mexicans finally gained entrance to 
the fort they burst in upon Bowie who sat 
propped up in bed with six rifles across his 
knees; snatching up one rifle after another he 
fired them with deadly aim, killing six of the 
oncoming Mexicans. He then drew the long, 
keen hunting knife that he had invented and, 
although mortally wounded by bayonet thrusts, 
he killed as many more before he died. Thus it 
was that one sick American accounted for a 
dozen greasers . 

The defenders of the Alamo fought and died 
to a man, though it is said that there was one 
who escaped. Shortly after the massacre, Gen- 
eral Sam Houston with a small army arrived 
on the scene of action but it was too late. The 
next month, though, at San Jacinto, he anni- 
hilated Santa Anna ’s army and so avenged the 
brave defenders of the Alamo. Texas then be- 
came an independent nation and later it was 
admitted as a state of the American Union. 

It looked very much as if the oil tank garri- 
son at Terrazas was to be another Alamo. But 
there was this difference: wireless telegraphy 


WITH UNCLE SAM IN MEXICO 179 

and air-planes had been invented, and while it 
had been possible for the Terrazas defenders 
to get in touch with the small army at Corra- 
litos through the high-power station at El Paso, 
the fighters of the Alamo had no means of com- 
municating with General Houston’s army. 

The camp of the American Army was located 
about a mile outside of the dozing little town 
of Corralitos. There was something so peace- 
ful and satisfying in the semitropical air, it 
seemed quite impossible that guerilla warfare 
was again in progress and to the soldier boys, 
who now and then caught the savory odors, as 
the cooks were preparing the evening chow, life 
seemed too good to be true. Any observer 
though, with half-an-eye, could have seen that 
underlying it all was a current of tense and 
watchful waiting from the officers down to the 
buck-privates as they moved with silence and 
precision about their duties. 

In the artillery the radio details had their 
aerials up and their instruments connected in 
readiness for instant action. The field pieces 
had been quickly mounted in temporary posi- 
tions for defense and in the caissons lined up 


180 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


beside them row after row of glistening 75 ’s 
were visible. 

The cavalrymen, with their horses picketed 
and being fed and saddle equipment three 
paces to the rear, ate their chow sitting on their 
saddles as is their wont, for these make first- 
rate seats when on the ground — ready at a mo- 
menta notice to saddle and mount. 

In the center of this scene of preparedness 
were the headquarters’ tents. One after an- 
other troop-captains, battery commanders and 
orderlies dashed up to and from headquar- 
ters, carrying with them the carefully planned 
instructions of the commanding officer who sat 
inside. 

On the outskirts of the big camp mounted 
sentries rode their posts in true military fash- 
ion, to wit, keeping always on the alert and ob- 
serving everything that took place within sight 
and hearing. As dusk closed in on the camp the 
brisk and cheery notes of the bugles and the 
crisp and curt challenges of the sentries as they 
cried, “halt, who’s there?” gave an even more 
martial aspect to the bivouac, if such a thing 
were possible. 

About nine o’clock that evening, while the ra- 


WITH UNCLE SAM IN MEXICO 181 


dio-operators of the various details sat with 
their head-phones glued to their ears, Henkley, 
attached to D battery, picked up the following 
message : 

BTN ; BIN; BTN; Hcmdful of Americans 
Terrazas besieged by mob . Rush aid. By or- 
der Headquarters . U. S. A. Fort Bliss, Wheel- 
er Commanding. 

Jack’s message from the high power German 
station at Terrazas had been caught by the 
operator of the American station at Fort Bliss 
just outside of El Paso and he had sent it back 
to the commander of the 11th Brigade at Cor- 
ralitos. Curiously enough the operators of the 
11th Brigade could not receive the message 
from the German station since it used an enor- 
mously long wave length, while theirs was of 
very short length. Fortunately it was picked 
up by the high-power station at Fort Bliss, who 
then relayed it. 

The caiptain’s orderly from D battery dashed 
over to headquarters with the message. Ad- 
mitted to the tent, he entered with his hat 
on, which a soldier always does when he is 


182 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


armed, took a smart step forward, clicked his 
heels together and at the same time saluted. 

“Sir, Captain Brown, 15th Field Artillery, D 
Battery, reports this message received by ra- 
dio/ ’ and handing the Brigadier-General the 
message he again clicked his heels and salut- 
ing smartly did a neat about face and departed. 

Less then five minutes later the bugles sound- 
ed the call to horse and in fifteen minutes the 
camp was broken and the long line of cavalry 
and artillery was off for Terrazas on the fast 
trot. The cries of the drivers sounding 
through the still night air as the column fol- 
lowed the narrow circuitous trail, blended 
strangely well with the rattle of the wheels, the 
groaning of the pieces and the clickety-thud of 
the horses’ hoofs. 

From the cavalry came the jingle and click 
of the sabers against stirrups and these musi- 
cal sounds mingled again with the snorting and 
whinnying of the spirited horses. And finally 
an airplane darted forth and circled in every 
direction for miles to make sure that the enemy 
was not stealthily waiting in some concealed 
position ready to make a surprise attack upon 
them. Hour after hour all through the night 


WITH UNCLE SAM IN MEXICO 183 

the American forces pushed on, leaving mile 
after mile behind them and Terrazas grew 
nearer and nearer. 

As the pale stars above them and the bowl- 
like crescent of the moon in the western sky 
were giving way to the purple light of the early 
morning, the column came within sight of the 
town and the distant sound of rifle and pistol 
fire was carried to the ears of the eager boys in 
khaki. They became more alert, notwithstand- 
ing their long ride, and even the horses ap- 
peared to sense the need of speed for they 
pressed forward ever faster and faster. 

A mile and a half from Terrazas, the artil- 
lery halted and drew up into position with 
every piece trained on the town. The airplane 
made directly for Terrazas and circled round 
it. Inside of two minutes it was back again 
and was signaling to the radio-details. D bat- 
tery radio-detail, which was always the first 
to tune in, caught the message : 

“ Americans putting up desperate fight on 
roof of 'dole tank station. Mexicans number 
five thousand. Inform cavalry. Withhold 
fire.” 


184 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

A hard riding orderly caught up to the cav- 
alry column before it had gone very far and 
imparted the news to the Major in command. 

< 

The little band on top of the ’dobe garrison 
was hard hit and the fallen outnumbered the 
survivors, two to one. Gradually one by one 
the infuriated Mexicans reached the roof of the 
9 dobe in spite of the superb marksmanship of 
the defenders. Like so many swarthy pirates 
boarding a treasure ship They fairly swarmed 
up the ladders and as fast as one greaser was 
shot or beaten off, fifty more surged forward to 
take his place. 

The Americans were bravely keeping up a 
steady fire and the barrels of their Winchesters 
grew blistering hot to the touch. Over the 
9 dobe hung a haze of smoke from the incessant 
fire and the rank and stifling odor of burnt 
powder permeated the air like the fumes of a 
poison gas. As soon as a Mexican had forced 
his way over the parapet surrounding the roof 
one of the defenders would rush forward and 
a hand to hand encounter would ensue, fought 
silently, but with all the ferociousness that the 
puma displays when driven into a comer. 


WITH UNCLE SAM IN MEXICO 185 

After an exchange of shots on both sides, 
Yankee and greaser would close in and come to 
death grips. In this close fighting the greaser 7 s 
invariable weapon was the long kiiife. For 
most of the men the only defense against 
this butcher’s tool was the clubbed revolver, 
but there were among the Americans some half-* 
a-dozen cow punchers, who had learned the 
trick and like the defenders of the Alamo these 
met knife with knife. 

Would come a lighting like-lunge, a skillful 
parry and then with locked blades the princi- 
pals of this knife duel to the death would stand 
like statues, their muscles bulging, neither dar- 
ing to make the first move to break the dan- 
gerous deadlock. Suddenly with a gliding step 
the duelists would move to and fro, or around 
in circles with the litheness of panthers in the 
act of bringing down their prey. And soon the 
end would come for one or the other, when the 
death dueling couple collided with another pair 
who were similarly engaged. 

And so it was that for a time the greasers 
who managed to gain the roof were speedily 
dispatched until not a single one remained. 
During this interval the Mexicans were gather- 


186 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


in g for a fresh assault and Captain Richard- 
son, seeing the uselessness of the struggle, 
called the few survivors together. Very differ- 
ent he looked now from the trim, jovial man who 
had taken command the morning before. 

“Boys,” he said wearily, his bloody shirt 
hanging in rags from his shoulders and one arm 
dangling limply by his side, “we have put up 
a good fight as true Americans should, but we 
are outnumbered a hundred to one. We have 
no more water and our ammunition is gone. 
You fellows have stuck by me splendidly and I 
thank you. If there are any among you who 
want to surrender you can do so now, with 
honor. As for me I am going down fighting as 
the fighting Richardson’s have always done.” 

‘ * Surrender, hell ! ’ 9 yelled Bill, the blood run- 
ning from his cheek as though an artery was 
cut, “I’ve just begun to fight!” 

“I’ll go down with you, Captain,” cried Jack; 
“while there’s a breath of life in me, I’ll never 
surrender! ” 

“Nor I,” “Nor I,” “Nor I,” came from the 
rest of the men, whose red blood was still flow- 
ing hot in their veins. 

There was one w T ho had kept silent during 


WITH UNCLE SAM IN MEXICO 187 

this new declaration to stand by Captain Rich- 
ardson to the last. This fellow, whose name I 
shall not give, stepped forward, his face suf- 
fused with shame and his head hanging. He 
could not look the Captain in the eye. 

“The way I figure it, Captain, is that a live 
man is worth twenty dead men any day. Pm 
going to surrender. So good-by and good luck. ’ ’ 

Captain Richardson said never a word in re- 
ply to this fellow who had showed his yellow 
streak. 

“You coward !” shouted Jack, who was mad 
clear through. 

“I ought to bump him off meself,” growled 
Bill, whose impulse was to do it then and there. 

“No, boys , 1 9 admonished the Captain , 1 i he has 
put up a desperate fight with us and now his 
life is his own.” 

The spiritless fellow tied a white handker- 
chief to the muzzle of his rifle and walked over 
to the cornice of the ’dobe. The greasers had 
put up more ladders and were swarming up 
them for the final attack. The quitter stepped 
onto the rung of one of the ladders, waved his 
white flag and shouted in Spanish, “I surren- 
der ! Mercy ! ’ ’ 


188 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


From the mob below came the broken fire of 
twenty rifles and the unfortunate fellow pitched 
forward and crashed to the ground. 

It was at that instant the airplane hummed 
into sight and every face on the roof and on the 
ground was turned in its direction. The sur- 
vivors set up a great shout of hope. 

“Boys, we are saved,’ ’ cried Captain Rich- 
ardson, and scarcely were the words out of 
his mouth than down the main street of Ter- 
razas came the flying cavalry column with the 
Stars and Stripes fluttering grandly at its head. 
It was the finest sight they had ever seen. 

At the first glimpse of the airplane the Mex- 
icans became bewildered. Very few of them 
had ever seen a flying machine before, but they 
knew full well it was some American contriv- 
ance that had come to help cut off their chances 
of victory which was just within their grasp. 
They knew rightly, for straight toward the mob 
surrounding the ’dobe came the troopers with 
their sabers flashing and their revolvers spitting 
fire. It was all Lopez could do to hold his men 
together. He commanded them to fire on the 
foe, and this his frightened men did, directing 



“MADLY LOPEZ’ MOB BROKE AND SCATTERED ” — Page 189 


























WITH UNCLE SAM IN MEXICO. 189 

their efforts to repulse them, but it was futile, 
for the biting steel bore down upon them. 

Madly, Lopez ’ mob broke and scattered, and, 
in less time than it takes to tell it, it was com- 
pletely routed and in full flight across the fields 
in every direction, with the hard riding troop- 
ers on its heels bent on vengeance. 

The few survivors of the terrific fight on the 
roof of the ’dobe garrison climbed down, if they 
were able, or were carried down if wounded, 
and the latter were immediately taken care of 
by the medical corps. Though Jack and Bill 
had been in the thickest of the fight, neither was 
badly wounded. Jack had received a bad pow- 
der burn across his cheek when a greaser had 
tried to blow his head off at point blank range. 

Bill was cut in a dozen places, the worst one 
being a slash that reached almost from his 
mouth to his ear. 

“Til be a nice lookin’ bird when me mudder 
sees me, now won’t I,” he soliloquized as the 
doctor was dressing it. 

“It’s an honor wound and you’ll live to see 
the day when you’re proud of it,” the doctor 
assured him. 

“All I’ve got to say is that old scar-faced 


190 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

Lopear hasn’t got anything on me,” he went on 
sadly. 

Most of the other men had not escaped so 
easily and there was scarcely a man- jack of 
them, including Captain Richardson, who had 
not been shot as well as knifed. Altogether it 
had been a ghastly affair and now that they 
were safely out of it the boys could not refrain 
from shuddering as they looked upon their he- 
roic companions who had made the supreme 
sacrifice, and paid the price with their life’s 
blood. 

A number of officers were coming across the 
street toward them, when suddenly Jack let 
out a glad cry of recognition. 

‘ 1 Captain Neilson!” 

The Captain spotted him. 

“Why, hello, Heaton. What in the world 
are you doing here? I should scarcely have 
recognized you with that big burn on your 
cheek. You look as if you had been dragged 
through a burning knot-hole. Last time I saw 
you, you were languishing in that mud-hole at 
Brest.” 

“Fighting in France was a cinch as against 
fighting in Mexico if what I’ve seen here is a 


WITH UNCLE SAM IN MEXICO 191 

fair sample. Why it’s done here now just as 
it was a hundred years ago. That roof there 
was a seething hades for the past twenty-four 
hours. The Alamo couldn’t have been any 
worse, except that Houston ’s army didn ’t reach 
it in time and that your army got here at the 
eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute.’ ’ 

“How in heaven’s name did you happen to 
be in Terrazas?” Captain Neilson asked. 

J ack told him briefly all about it. 

The Captain put his hands gently on his for- 
mer radio-operator’s shoulders. “Just as im- 
petuous and full of adventure as you ever were. 
By-the-by, what are you going to do now, Jack? 
Go back to New York and sell oil engines, I 
suppose.” 

A speculative look had come into Jack’s eyes. 
“I don’t supose you could use a couple of good 
troopers in your outfit, could you, Captain?” 

“Use them!” exclaimed the Captain, “I 
should say I could. You know, on coming down 
here from El Paso my troop was assigned to 
forage duty and I lost six men, when we were 
ambushed, by some snipers. We made the 
scoundrels pay dearly for it, though.” 

“You know I served as a trooper before I 


192 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

was assigned to the field artillery and I’ve got 
a pal that was a gunner on a submarine and be- 
fore that he was a cow-puncher. I thought that 
maybe you’d consider letting Bill and me enlist 
and so help to fill up your ranks, ’ ’ replied J ack 
with a grin. 

“I surely will,” returned Captain Neilson; 
“Pm only sorry I can’t appoint you to be one 
of my lieutenants, but since I can ’t do that and 
inasmuch as two of the men who were picked 
off by the snipers were sergeants, I’ll let you 
and your partner serve in their places. As 
soon as this trouble is over you can both return 
here to Terrazas and finish up this oil busi- 
ness.” 

Jack and Bill came to rigid attention, clicked 
their heels and saluted. 

“Sir, Sergeants Heaton and Adams thank 
the Captain for his kindness and wish to know 
to what troop they are assigned,” said Bill with 
his old service manner. 

“Troop K, 7 th Cavalry , Sergeant,” replied 
Captain Neilson, acknowledging the salute, and 
with that the boys about faced and strode off as 
stiff as two ramrods to don the khaki again. 

Over in K troop the boys discovered several 


WITH UNCLE SAM IN MEXICO 193 

old boon companions of theirs who had been in 
the great World War and after they had drawn 
their uniforms and equipment from the supply 
sergeant, they felt quite at home again. 

An hour later a messenger from the artillery, 
which lay posted outside of the town, informed 
the cavalry commander that they had been 
directed to move south toward the city of Chi- 
huahua, where mobs of Mexicans were being 
rapidly massed. 

Before leaving, Jack and Bill paid their re- 
spects to Captain Bichardson and he was sur- 
prised and happy to see them in their khaki 
uniforms. They told him they were again 
headed south, but this time it was with Troop 
K, and that they would soon return with the 
bacon. He bade them an affectionate adios, 
and wished them the best of luck. 


CHAPTER XI 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 

T WO months have passed since Jack and 
Bill dashed to the attack. After that, K 
Troop was detailed to police duty and many 
were the skirmishes the boys had as the troop 
ferreted out the bandits and renegades of Mexi- 
co from their hiding places in the foothills, 
and canons of the Sierra Madre range. 

One after another these murderous and law- 
less gangs of cut-throats were driven from their 
lairs by the members of K Troop and ridden 
down and exterminated by the ruthless cavalry- 
men or else forced to surrender; after proper 
trial they were either imprisoned or executed, 
according to the extent of their crimes. It w T as 
during one of these scouting expeditions into 
the foothills that the boys had their last encoun- 
ter with Senor Lopez, the bandit leader and 
bunco-oil promoter and this time they caught 
194 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 195 

him flying his true colors which showed him up 
to be the half-breed scoundrel that he was. 

After Lopez had had the victory of the Ter- 
razas ’dobe snatched out of his hands when it 
was all but his, he made a speedy get-away and 
rode for dear life to the mountains where he 
had left one of his gangs. Lopez was different 
from most Mexicans in that while they are 
always cocksure of things happening the way 
they want them to, whether it is winning the 
capital prize in the national lottery or licking 
the United States, he (Lopez) always banked 
on what he would do should affairs not pan out 
his way. 

To this end he kept a couple of mounts in 
readiness in Terrazas in the event of being hard 
pressed and besides he knew Chihuahua better 
than any other man. Thus it was that he dis- 
appeared shortly after the airplane winged in- 
to sight, for he knew that a detachment of 
American troops was hard by and to save his 
own hide he ran away and left to their fate the 
men who had served under him. 

On reaching the Sierra Madre mountains he 
had no trouble in finding his gang which num- 
bered about a hundred men. He told them that 


196 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

the American forces had entered Terrazas and 
that they would have to lay low. But he said 
never a word about the ignominous defeat of 
his men at Terrazas. 

A couple of weeks after the Americans had 
passed through Terrazas, Lopez sent out two 
scouts to learn its whereabouts, if indeed it 
had any, which he very much doubted. When 
his scouts, who had barely escaped with their 
lives, returned and reported to their chief that 
the bandits had had their eye teeth knocked 
out at Chihuahua, Lopez was one of the maddest 
men in Mexico, and he swore eternal vengeance 
thenceforth on any and all Americans who 
might cross his path. 

This was the way matters stood as K Troop 
was cautiously riding along the floor of one of 
the canons in the Sierra Madre range, every 
man with his senses of sight and hearing on the 
alert for bandits. Suddenly a hail of bullets 
was showered on them from above and they 
knew they were on the right trail. Half way 
up the canon wall was a narrow ledge, well 
protected by boulders from the floor side and 
by an overhanging cliff from the top. A nar- 
row, winding, ribbon-like ledge leading down 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 197 

from the top. showed how the bandits had 
gained this vantage point, and it was clear that 
it was one of their strongholds. 

For an instant K Troop was in a perilous 
position and in danger of being completely an- 
nihilated, for the bandits kept up an incessant 
fire upon them from the safety of their ledge. 
Hastily the troopers dismounted and sought the 
protection afforded to both horses and men by 
the boulders which were strewn about the floor 
of the canon. Captain Neilson set about to de- 
vise some scheme to dislodge the enemy from 
their vantage point and if possible to capture 
them. 

Night was coming on and the Captain held 
his men back until it was dark. Then leaving 
two platoons on the floor of the canon with in- 
structions to maintain a steady fire upon the 
bandits, Captain Neilson silently led the third 
platoon, to which Jack and Bill were assigned, 
back along the floor until they reached a trail 
which wound like a snake up the wall. They 
used every precaution to maintain silence so 
that they might take the bandits by surprise. 
The platoon steadily climbed up the trail, reach- 
ing the top only a couple of hours before dawn 


198 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

and there they rested and partook of cold ra- 
tions. 

Lopez was not to be caught napping for he 
had taken the precautionary measure of posh- 
ing sentries ; hut the sentry on duty at the head 
of the pass was not as far-seeing or as cautious 
as his chief with the result that he was very 
much asleep. When Captain Neilson’s scouts 
spotted him they reported back and then came 
the question of how best to dispatch him. It 
would be easy to shoot him but this would not 
do for the crack of a gun would be heard by 
Lopez, though he only had an ear and a half to 
hear it with. 

Whatever was done must be done quickly 
and silently and Bill volunteered to do the job. 
His training on the streets of New York as a 
boy came in handy for just as he had often 
snaked himself through a length of gas or water 
pipe that was scarcely large enough for him to 
get into, so now he dropped on the ground at 
full length and with a series of movements that 
would make a boa constrictor jealous, he made 
his serpentine way to the place where the sentry 
sat sleeping the sleep — not quite of the just, 
but — of the weary. 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 199 

Bill reached his side in due time under the 
protection of the two scouts who had kept a 
bead on the sentry in the event of his waking 
up prematurely. As the trooper was on the 
verge of relieving him of his revolver, who, 
should wake up but Mr. Sentry. He sat dazed 
for a moment with Bill’s big face pressed al- 
most against his but he speedily snapped out 
of it and did his level best to pull the trigger of 
his gun to the end that his opponent might have 
the benefit of its bullet. 

The New York boy had a different idea in 
that he not only wanted the sentry’s gun but — 
and he was most particular about this — he did 
not want it fired. In the first inning there was 
as pretty a bit of tumbling as you would see 
in a circus. Both Bill and the sentry held the 
gun and each one must needs have it for his 
very own. They wrestled, gyrated and jiu- 
jitsued without either one letting go of the gun 
for an instant. Finally, hard-boiled Bill’s 
strength prevailed and the wily greaser , know- 
ing that it was only a question of seconds un- 
til he would have to relinquish his grip on it, 
decided it was time for the second inning. Sud- 
denly he let go with both hands and made a 


200 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


quick pass for his revolver. In this Bill an tier 
pated him and as he pulled it from his holstel 
the butt of his own gun wielded by his adversary 
came into contact with his head and he promptly 
w r ent to sleep again. 

It was full daylight now and the troopers 
skirted along the top of the wall until they 
struck the trail leading down to the bandits’ 
stronghold. When they were in well secluded 
positions, Captain Neilson called on Lopez to 
surrender. The troopers had come upon the 
bandits like phantom men and, indeed, Lopez 
and his gang could not have been more sur- 
prised if a platoon of spirit troopers had ap- 
peared among them. 

The strategem had worked to perfection. 
The two platoons on the canon floor had kept up 
a steady fire throughout the night and never 
once had the bandits suspected that a detach- 
ment was slipping around on their rear. When 
the Captain called on them to surrender, they 
were in about the same fix as Chilili had been 
the night Jack let him look into the barrel of 
his six-gun from the roof. To a man they 
wheeled around ready to fire on their new 
enemy, as they thought, but only jagged boul- 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 201 


ders were visible with the glint of rifle barrels 
showing over them. It was then that Jack and 
Bill recognized among them Lopez, the bandit 
leader, Chilili, and some of the others who had 
dynamited the train near San Bias. 

Again the Captain called to them to lay down 
their arms. Instead of obeying Lopez fired in 
the direction the Captain’s voice had come 
from. A volley from the platoon answered his 
shot and a number of his men dropped in their 
tracks. Lopez saw that the jig was up and 
rather than be taken alive he gave vent to a 
maddened cry and jumped from the ledge to the 
canon floor nearly a thousand feet below. It 
was in this fashion then that their leader Senor 
Jose Lopez, criminal jack-of -all-trades and 
sometime gentleman promoter who had been 
the cause of so much trouble to Mr. Heaton, as 
well as to Jack and Bill, met his tragic end. 

A dozen crimes had been proved against 
Chilili and he was tried by a military court, 
convicted, stood up against a wall and sum- 
marily executed. It was altogether too light a 
punishment considering the robberies he had 
committed, the number of men he had wantonly 
killed and the trains he had dynamited. 


202 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


Shortly after the capture of the Lopez gang 
K Troop was ordered to rejoin its regiment. 
As the hoys had signed up for the duration of 
the emergency which was over they were mus- 
tered out. They had small desire to leave the 
cavalry though for they had made many friends 
in the short time they were with it. Another 
reason they disliked to part with it was because 
their regiment is the oldest American cavalry 
regiment in existence to-day. 

It has more traditions than any other cavalry 
regiment for it was with General Custer at his 
famous last stand of the Little Big Horn, Wy- 
oming. The Sioux Indians, one of the fiercest 
of the Western tribes, had broken the limits 
of their reservation and General Custer was 
sent to drive them back. Because he underes- 
timated the number of Indians, General Custer 
ordered the charge sounded on June 25, 1876. 
The 7th Cavalry charged headlong into the 
Indians who greatly outnumbered them and 
during the terrible fight which followed, General 
Custer fell as did every man in his command. 
The total casualties were 261 killed and 52 
wounded. 

But Jack had urgent business to attend to in 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 203 

Terrazas and of course Bill would go with him. 
There they found that Mr. Richardson — he had 
become Mr. again at his own request — had his 
plant in full swing and that Uncle Sam had 
taken charge of the big German wireless sta- 
tion. The wells of the Mexican Consolidated 
Company , Limited, were in exactly the same 
condition as when the boys had left Terrazas. 

Jack had previously wired his father of the 
true condition of affairs of the Mexican Con- 
solidated wells and the deceit that had been 
practiced upon the stockholders by Lopez. Mr. 
Heaton had in the meantime gotten in touch 
with the American stockholders and they had 
appointed a committee, of which he was the 
chairman, to take charge of the Company’s af- 
fairs until it could be reorganized. 

On learning of Jack’s return to Terrazas, 
Mr. Heaton wired him that the committee had 
appointed him manager pro tern, which, as he" 
explained to Bill, meant for the time being, to 
straighten out matters at the wells. Jack in 
turn informed his father of his acceptance of 
this responsible position and went to Mr. Rich- 
ardson for advice. The latter had pretty well 


204 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

recovered by this time from the effects of the 
valiant fight he had put up atop the ’dobe. 

“I congratulate you, Jack. And so now you 
are the manager of the Mexican Consolidated. 
What a pleasure it will be to have American 
neighbors instead of that Mexican crowd. I 
wonder what became of Senor Lopez. I have 
not seen him since the day he was directing the 
attack on the * dobe . He was neither killed nor 
captured but simply disappeared. ’ ’ 

“You won’t need to worry about Lopez any 
more, Mr. Richardson,” and then Jack related 
to him the manner of Lopez’ passing. 

Mr. Richardson nodded his approval. 

‘ * He had nerve all right ; you must give him 
credit for that,” said Jack. 

“Yes,^’ replied Mr. Richardson, and he had 
ability, too. If he had only been content to have 
run the Consolidated wells honestly, he would 
have been a rich man enjoying life to-day. 
Well, egad, I am right glad we are rid of him 
for all time. Now, Jack, just what do you pro- 
pose to do as your first step toward rehabili- 
tating the Mexican Consolidated?” 

“That’s exactly what I want your advice 
on,” replied Jack. “It’s this way, ME Rich- 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 20.5 

ardson; my father’s investment is a losing deal 
for him every day the wells are idle, and I pro- 
pose to get them in working order as quickly 
as I possibly can. As soon as they are pro- 
ducing again and things are ship-shape they 
can send a manager down from New York and 
then I can go back home.” 

“Why not stay right here yourself? There 
are worse towns on the map than Terrazas and 
now that the United States has cleaned up Mex- 
ico, it will be a right decent place to live in,” 
urged Mr. Richardson. 

“As for climate, I never saw the like of it in 
my life. It’s just one continuous round of sun- 
shine and summer and I like our own people 
here. But Bill is getting uneasy. It’s funny 
how these born and bred New Yorkers always 
want to get back to that little old Bagdad on 
the Hudson. How about it, Bill?” 

“I’d rather be a lamp-post on Broadway, 
than the mayor of Terrazas,” was Bill’s way 
of saying what he thought of the proposition. 

“But while I am here I’m counting on your 
help, Mr. Richardson. Now, what’s the first 
thing for me to do? You know that being the 


206 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


manager of an oil well plant isn’t my regular 
business, but I’m not going to fluke it.” 

“ Suppose we go over to the Consolidated 
wells and take a look at them. We can see then 
just what is needed.” 

On looking over the ground they discovered 
that all of the machinery had been removed, 
though the late Senor Lopez’ mahogany office 
furniture had not been disturbed. 

“Suppose the big Mexican guy that Lopez 
sold the wells to should show up, what then?” 
asked Bill, to the end that he might have some 
idea as to how to proceed. 

“He doesn’t figure in it at all any more,” 
laughed Jack; “any Mexican official that 
thinks he’s got a claim on this property can 
take it up with the United States Court. As a 
matter of fact, I don’t believe that the wells 
were ever transferred or that the alleged Mex- 
ican official will ever be heard from. ’ ’ 

“My viewpoint is that Senor Lopez was the 
Mexican official he was always talking about 
and that he sold the wells to himself,” ex- 
plained Mr. Richardson. “Now put these 
items down. You will need a steam boiler of 
the kind known as the oil country locomotive 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 207 

type; a horizontal engine of the link type; a 
hand wheel for distributing the power pro- 
duced by your steam engine and boiler, and, 
last of all, seventeen pump jacks to work the 
pumps in the well tubings/ ’ 

“ I suppose that Lopez has plugged up all of 
the wells and that I will have to shoot them to 
start them flowing again. ’ 9 

“If I were you, Jack, I would pull the tubing 
from the wells, take out the plugged sections 
and replace them with new tubing. In dyna- 
miting the wells, or shooting them, as you call 
it, you are liable to do much damage. In pull- 
ing the tubing you will save much expense, 
though it will take more time,” advised Mr. 
Richardson. 

Having made an inventory of all the mate- 
rials that were needed to open the wells, Jack 
wired his father and got back the reply to order 
whatever was necessary from El Paso. In the 
meantime, the boys were as busy as nailers get- 
ting a force of men together and for these he 
had to send to various towns in Texas, although 
Mr. Richardson loaned him enough of his own 
men to start the work of pulling the tubes and 
repairing them. 


208 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

This work took up the best part of a fort- 
night and Bill, who had worked for the Hollcmd 
Submarine Compcmy, made a very valuable 
man. And then came a lull while they were 
waiting for the consignment of pumping jacks 
and other machinery and time weighed very 
heavily on their young minds. 

Bill, who had been in the Navy, aud had set 
foot in nearly every country on the face of the 
earth except South America, was at that not 
exactly what you would call a cosmopolite, that 
is a globe-trotter, who liked one place as well 
as another and is equally at home wherever he 
happened to be. All towns looked alike to Bill 
except “Noo York,” and now that peace had 
been declared and there was nothing but com- 
mon, every-day hard work to be done he was 
pining to return home. 

"When Jack was not otherwise engaged, he 
sat at his former foe’s mahogany desk and 
took it easy in his swivel chair, the like of 
which, I dare say, was not to be duplicated in 
the whole province of Chihuahua. Know you, 
too, that it was Bill’s habit to come in and cock 
his feet up on the polished surface of the afore- 
said mahogany desk. 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 209 

1 ‘Bill, I insist that you either take your feet 
off of Senor Lopez ’ desk or take off your spurs 
first. Can’t you see you’re scratching it all 
up?” Jack put it to his pal fairly. 

4 ‘ Senor Lopear doesn’t care, does he?” asked 
Bill dryly and blinking as though the sun was 
shining in his eyes, but making no move to 
comply with the manager ’s request. 4 4 He hasn ’t 
any use for the desk where he is now, has he?” 

“Probably not,” retorted Jack, “but what’s 
the use of spoiling an otherwise perfectly good 
mahogany desk.” 

“If Lopear doesn’t care, I don’t see why you 
should take it so to heart,” groused Bill as he 
pulled his feet down and left two parallel lines 
cut deep in the surface. “I don’t like these 
high-toned fixin’s nohow.” 

“You don’t see Mr. Richardson putting his 
feet on his desk, or me putting my feet on my 
desk, do you?” asked Jack. 

“Your desk! A minute ago it belonged to 
old Lopear and now its yourn, ’ ’ went on Bill in 
a very peeved tone of voice. 

“Well, it would belong to Lopez if he was 
here, but as he ’s not here and as I use it, I say, 
figuratively, my desk!” 


210 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


“From the tumble Lopear took in the canon 
I says he ’s a mighty long ways from bein’ here ; 
that’s what I says,” Bill came back at his part- 
ner. Then the old primordial impulse came to 
the surface and he blurted out, “Say, bo, if me 
and you wasn ’t pals, I ’d make you put up your 
dukes, see!” 

‘ ‘ The trouble with you, Bill, is that you take 
offense too quickly.” 

“I never took a fence in me life,” Bill pro- 
tested vehemently. “I picked up half-a-ton of 
coal onct, when the hind wheel caved in under 
a bloke’s wagon and afore he could fix it up. 
It was a godsend to us, I’m tellin’ you, Jack, 
for me mudder was sick and we’d no fire for 
tree days ” 

“Wait a minute,” said Jack; “what’s that 
backing in on our siding? It looks like our 
pumping jacks at last ! ’ ’ 

Sure enough, there was a train of flat cars 
backing up on the siding of the Mexican Con- 
solidated Company, Limited, they bore the com- 
pany’s label, and they were loaded with the 
long looked-for pumping machinery. With 
shouts of joy, Jack and Bill tore out of the of- 
fice, forgetting their dissatisfaction with things 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 211 


in general and ceasing the small bickering they 
were engaged in. Hardly had the cars come to 
a full stop before they had a gang of cholo-boys 
at work unloading them. 

Then they and their men began to assemble 
the pumps, move them into place and set them 
on their foundations. It was a matter of an- 
other ten days or two weeks, before the ma- 
chinery was all set up properly and the wells 
connected in. 

Then one morning bright and early Jack 
pronounced everything 0. K. and ready to 
work. He brought Mr. Richardson over to 
watch the reopening of the Mexican Consoli- 
dated wells under the direction of Americans. 
When Jack gave the signal, Bill, who was act- 
ing as chief engineer, turned on the power, the 
walking beams began their rhythmic strokes and 
the pumps of all of the seventeen wells were 
drawing oil in a steady flow and discharging it 
into the great storage tanks. 

‘ 4 Bravo, boys!” cried Mr. Richardson; you 
have certainly done the trick.” 

“We couldn’t have succeeded at all without 
yourlielp,” said Jack, “because neither of us 
knew anything about operating oil machinery. ’ ’ 


212 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


“ Nonsense, my boy, what I did was little 
enough. Why, if it had not been for you and 
that radio message you sent to El Paso, I 
wouldn’t have been here to-day. So I guess 
that you are more than entitled to any little 
help I may have given you. There is only one 
thing now that I suggest and that is to change 
the infernal name of your company.” 

That put a bug in Bill’s brain. He was al- 
ways greatly impressed by the huge American 
flag that floated so proudly in the breeze over 
the top of the oil tank of the Terrazas plant. 
The first thing that Mr. — the then Captain — 
Richardson had done when he and his men had 
been driven to the roof of the ’dobe was to hoist 
the American flag and they had kept Lopez’ mob 
so busy they could not pull it down. 

There it bravely floated, bullet riddled, when 
the 7th Cavalry dashed into town. That 
precious flag now rests in a glass case in the 
head office of the Terrazas Company in New 
York, as a memorial of another American vic- 
tory, and a monster star-spangled banner has 
been waving over the Terrazas plant in its place 
ever since. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve got another Amer- 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 213 

ican flag anywhere around?” Bill asked Mr. 
Richardson on the qniet. 

“Yes, I always keep a couple in reserve. 
Why, Bill?” 

“I thought as how if you’d give me the 
borry of one I’d hoist it above our Company’s 
works,” explained Bill. 

4 4 Come with me, son, and you shall have one 
as a gift,” replied the Terrazas manager. 

A few minutes later Mr. Richardson called 
Jack’s attention to Bill, who with a couple of his 
men were climbing up the highest derrick on the 
place. 

4 4 What’s the big idea?” questioned Jack. 

4 4 Wait and see,” was the reply. 

On reaching the top Bill lashed the beautiful 
new flag to a spar and the latter, in turn, he 
fixed to the top-most point of the derrick. All 
of the men had gathered to watch the perform- 
ance and when Bill flung the grand old bunting 
to the soft Mexican breeze, three mighty cheers 
went up. And long may it wave! 

A few evenings later a train pulled in from 
El Paso and from it stepped a man of mature 
years and wide experience in the oil fields. He 


214 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

.made his way over to the office of the American 
Consolidated Oil Company, asked for Mr. 
Heaton and introduced himself to Jack as Mr. 
Robbins, the new manager. After going over his 
credentials Jack turned the plant over to him. 

The boys were tickled almost to death for it 
meant that they were, at last, relieved of all fur- 
ther responsibility and were free to go home 
whenever they wanted to. Mr. Robbins went 
all over the plant with them and he was amazed 
at the tale he heard. 

“Boys, I couldn’t possibly have done better 
myself. You fellows have worked wonders 
here. Now take me over and introduce me to 
Mr. Richardson for he is the kind of a man I 
want to know. ’ ’ 

Late in the afternoon of the next day, Mr. 
Robbins said that the first shipment of oil was 
ready to be sent north to be refined, and that 
the wells might now be said to be operating in 
first class shape. 

The boy’s work was done and well done. The 
time had come when they were ready to leave 
Terrazas but this time they were headed north 
— for home. The hardest part of it though was 
saying good-by to Mr. Richardson. 


AMERICAN OIL FOR AMERICANS 215 

‘ 1 Sorry, mighty sorry, you are going to leave 
us so soon,” quoth that prince of men. “If at 
any time you ever need a friend call on me. 
But from what I have already seen of you boys, 
I do not think you will ever he likely to need, 
the assistance of an old hulk like me.” 

Mr. Richardson and Mr. Robbins accompa- 
nied Jack and Bill to the little station, for it 
was train time. The latter looked anxiously 
down the track and complained because the 
train was thirty-seven seconds late. Very dif- 
ferent they looked from the youngsters who 
rode into Terrazas a few months before in sad- 
dles, for Bill had expurgated his spurs and they 
wore the best store clothes that money could buy 
in Terrazas. But at El Paso they hoped to 
make another change for the better. 

Were these young soldiers of fortune anxious 
to get back to little old New York? Yea, bo, 
verily they were, and so would you have been, 
had you passed through the gruelling adven- 
tures that they had in order to turn a bunco oil 
company into one that paid dividends and to 
make Mexico a safe place to travel through or 
do business in. 


CHAPTER XII 


A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 

F ROM Terrazas to El Paso, from El Paso 
to St. Louis and from St. Louis to the old 
town. It doesn ’t look very far on the map, or 
sound like it in miles, but if you ever make the 
trip you’ll know that it is a long, long ways. 
For four days and nights the clickety-click of 
the wheels on the rails sang but one song in the 
ears of the boys and that was, 4 4 We’re going 
home ! We ’re going home ! ’ ’ 

Shortly after the train pulled out of El Paso 
they went into the dining car. They were a 
striking pair of youngsters as they sat there, 
their faces dyed the color of old mahogany 
by the fierce heat of the semi-tropical sun and 
fixed by the mordant of the desert winds. The 
dining car waiter, so black that ho was almost 
blue, hovered over them, attending to their 
every want as if they had been a pair of dukes 
216 


A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 217 
instead of just plain Jack and liis side-kick 

Bin. 

At last lie could restrain his curiosity no long- 
er and after a considerable amount of stam- 
mering and several unsuccessful attempts he 
was able to throw the thing that was on his 
mind from him. 1 

“ ’Sense me, boss, but ain’t you aU done been 
afightin ’ dem greasers down yar in Mexico, ’ ’ he 
drawled apologetically, addressing Jack. 

Upon Jack’s reply in the affirmative he fairly 
beamed on them. 

“Dawggone it,” he smiled, showing two rows 
of glistening bony processes that would have 
made a wonderful ad for a tooth-paste com- 
pany, “Ah knowed it as soon as I clapped mah 
lookers on you folks. Suh, Ah cain tell a troop- 
er a mile away. Ah served two enlistments on 
the bowdah mahself.” 

“How does it happen you’re not in the ser- 
vice now ? ’ ’ Bill asked him. 

“Well, sir, it was this away, boss; you see 
there’s a little yaller gal down N ’Orleans way 
and this away Ah gets a chance to see her 
every other trip Ah makes. One trip Ah runs 
from El Paso to St. Louis an’ the nex’ trip Ah 


218 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


runs from El Paso to N ’Orleans. Dawggone 
it Ah wishes Ah was makin’ dat trip now, ’deed 
Ah do.” 

“ Don’t worry, Jasper, she’ll be there when 
you get back,” Jack said encouragingly. 

“Yassir, yassir, but dere’s a mean, low- 
down jaundice-cull ’ed barbah dat’s all the time 
pestercatin’ ’roun’ mah gal when Ah’m on de 
road, and Ah suspecks dat some day Ah ’ll find 
dat ornry niggah’s done galloped away with 
mah honeysuckle down Mobile. Dawggone dat 
niggah’s hide nohow!” and with that he dex- 
terously balanced a tray of dishes on one hand 
above his head and trotted down the aisle to the 
kitchen. 

‘ ‘ Tough luck,” said Jack, sympathetically. 

“I had a goil onct,” reflected Bill; “it was 
when I was in the Navy. All the gobs was get- 
tin’ letters from goils out in Oshkosh, Kokomo 
and all of the rest of the burgs in the United 
States. A Jane starts in to writin’ to me from 
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and she wrote me the 
swellest letters I ever read, bar none, full of 
love, sympathizin’ like and gaif in general. 
That’s the goil for me, says I to myself, and so 


A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 219 

as soon as I could get a ten days’ shore leave 
I hops on a rattler and goes to Tuscaloosa. 

“I arrives one night and when I gets to her 
domicile I finds a beautiful maiden about the 
color of the skin of a boiled ham awaitin’ for me. 

“ ‘You’re not Miss Lucie Lalapaluza, are 
you?’ I asks feelin’ quite some pale around the 
gills.” 

“ ‘Ah reckons Ah is,’ she said, actin’ kitten- 
ish. 

“ ‘But you’re not the Miss Lalapaluza which 
wrote me this bunch of letters, are you ? ’ I asked 
her flat. 

“ ‘Yas, that is, mah Sunday school teacher 
done writ them fo’ me.’ 

“ ‘Good night!’ says I and with that I ske- 
daddled out into the darkness and I have not 
been seen since in Tuscaloosa. ’ ’ 

“Tough luck,” reiterated Jack, but this time 
laughing heartily. 

‘ ‘ Sierra Blanca ! Sierra Blanca ! ’ ’ yelled the 
porter. 

“This may be Sierra Blanca all right, as that 
shine calls it, but all I can see is a giant cactus 
and a water tank, ’ ’ ventured Bill. 

“It isn’t much to look at now,” admitted 


220 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


Jack, who was also trying to locate the town, 
“but I suppose that oil, gas and steam wells 
will be found in this section some day if they 
drill deep enough, and even electricity wells if 
some good promoter like Lopez should take it 
up. It must be a town, Bill, for there stands 
a Yuma Indian.” 

4 ‘ I never heard tell of an electricity well, ’ ’ ad- 
mitted Bill, but then there were a good many 
things in heaven and on earth he had not heard 
of. 

“You didn’t?” exclaimed Jack in feigned 
amazement. “Then you’ve missed half of your 
young life, Bill.” 

Now Bill could savvy almost anything except 
this electricity stuff , as he called it, but he had 
sense enough to know that he was entirely non 
compos mentis when it came to the theory of 
that form of energy and matter. When it had to 
do with working a piece of apparatus such as 
a magnet, a solenoid or an electric motor he 
had to be satisfied to throw the switch and let 
the juice do the work; as to how it did it, 
aye, that was the big mystery to him. He 
could grasp how water, or even gas, flowing m- 
side a pipe, acted but electricity, which Jack had 


A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 221 


told him flowed on the outside of a wire, in his 
seat of understanding was the absolute zero of 
possibilities. 

Of course, there is no such thing as an elec- 
tricity well, but Jack liked to have a little joke 
once in a while and about the only way he 
could put one over was at the expense of Bill's 
non-intellectual powers. So he bethought to tell 
him about an electricity well a promoter had 
sunk in the Orange mountains near Montclair, 
a good many years before, and in which many 
a poor sucker had sunk his good money. 

“A heavy insulated wire,” he told Bill in all 
seriousness, 4 4 projected from the top of the 
mountain, or hill it would be called in the Gold- 
en West, and leads , or wires, were run off from 
this which were connected to electric lamps, 
motors and other electrical equipment. All that 
was needed was to throw the switch and the 
electric current generated in the earth would 
flow, and light, heat and power were produced. 
Lopez was a piker as against this New York 
promoter with his electricity well.” 

4 4 Where in Sam Hill did the juice come 
from?” Bill wanted to know. 


222 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


i i From the bowels of the earth, just like 
water and gas and steam.” 

Bill sat blinking and thinking. 

“You see,” explained Jack when he had Bill 
going, “that the promoter had had a tunnel 
dug in the side of the mountain and in this he 
had installed a good sized power plant consist- 
ing of a gasoline engine and a dynamo. The 
wire from the top of the mountain led down to 
it and the return circuit was made through the 
earth and— there you have your electricity 
well.” 

“Why the son-of-a-gun ! ” howled Bill, “he 
and Lopear would have made a good team. ’ ’ 

And so the boys told stories and swapped 
yarns all the way along the line, when they 
were not asleep, just to pass the time away. 

“By jinks, it will be good to get back again. 
Do you know, Bill, I think I’ll stay home for 
awhile, where I can sleep in a good bed, eat 
good meals, go to good shows and walk down 
the street without having to keep my eye peeled 
for fear some greaser is going to ambush me 
and make a sieve of my body.” 

“You said it cull,” replied Bill unconsciously 
relapsing into his gas-house dialect, now that 


A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 223 

he was nearing the roar and the clamor of the 
great city of seven million souls that he knew 
and loved as only Steve Brodie knew and loved 
it. 

Jack had often noted this peculiarity of 
speech of his pal. Aboard ship he talked in the 
nautical terms of a gob, in New York like a 
rough neck from the Tenderloin and when in the 
desert wastes like a pioneer plainsman. But 
since Bill’s experience with the world had been 
a varied one this trick of appropriate talk was 
not to be wondered at. 

“From what I have seen of the United States 
and the Southern part of Texas^” went on Bill, 
“little old Noo York is good enough for me.” 

At last the heavy, smooth-riding, all-steel 
train pulled into the Market Street Station in 
Newark, which is only a little way from Mont- 
clair, and the boys were near enough to New 
York to feel that they were home again. Bill 
had agreed that he would stop off with Jack 
and have dinner with him and his folks, though 
he felt that he was not doing quite the right 
thing by not going on over and seeing his moth- 
er. To square matters he sent her a wire. 

At Newark they got into a jitney and were 


224 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

hustled away for Montclair as fast as a four- 
cylinder engine, Texas gasoline and a reckless 
chauffeur could drive them. 

‘ T ’d hate to be killed in one of these dinkey 
tin lizards here in Newark after all we’ve been 
through with in Mexico,” quoth Bill, hanging 
on for-dear life and with his Adam’s apple a 
couple of inches too high in his throat. 

“ There’s no danger, Bill,” Jack assured him. 
“ Newark has a population of nearly half a 
million and there’s only ten smash-ups on an 
average a day, so you see the chances of our 
getting hurt are practically nil. ’ ’ 

“ Nil bein’ the word,” gasped Bill. 

Jack had not wired his folks that he was com- 
ing for there are so many slips twixt the can- 
teen and the edges of the mouth, that he pre- 
ferred to take them by surprise, rather than to 
disappoint them. The taxi wheeled up to the 
curb and stopped as short as a well-trained 
broncho. The boys jumped out of the machine 
and fairly burst into the house. 

Once inside, Jack tore through the hall and 
parlor and into the library, leaving Bill to take 
care of himself. There, surely enough, as he 
hoped to find him was his father seated at his 


A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 225 

desk, so interested in his task that he had not 
been aware of the rumpus the hoys had kicked 
up like a couple of Texas steers in a fine art 
foundry. 

Look who’s here, Dad!” Jack called out. 

Mr. Heaton wheeled round in his chair and 
let out a shout of glad surprise. 

4 4 J ack ! — Safely home again ! ’ 9 

Then without waiting to say more, the usually 
calm and collected Mr. Heaton jumped up and 
drew his son to him. The next instant he had 
relinquished him from his embrace, rushed from 
the room upsetting such furniture as might im- 
pede the progress of his mad flight and called 
upstairs to his good wife : 

4 4 Come down quick, Mother; I’ve got some- 
thing for you!” 

4 4 Land sakes!” came back Mrs. Heaton’s 
soft, pleasant voice, “I will be down right 
away.” 

Then Mr. Heaton caught sight of Bill who 
was standing nervously in the parlor, looking 
around without seeing anything and twisting 
his brand-new felt hat all out of shape. 

44 Hel-lo, Bill,” cried the overjoyed old gen- 
tleman, rushing in and trying to shake the young 


226 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


man’s hand and slap him on the back at the 
same time, which contrarywise motions are 
next to a physical impossibility, as you will 
agree if you will but try it once. 

‘ ‘Thank you, sir!” spoke up poor Bill bravely 
and saluting as though Mr. Heaton was an of- 
ficer of high rank. 

Then Jack’s mother, a sweet, gentle soul, 
came in and the welcome was gone all through 
with again. Mrs. Heaton clasped her big boy 
to her heart and vowed she would never let 
him go away again. She was always glad to 
see Bill, too, for she had come to know that un- 
derneath his rough exterior there beat a heart 
of gold. 

Bill, though, was dreadfully uncomfortable, 
for a display of any kind of the softer emotions 
was a thing to be truly dreaded. 

“Excuse me, boys, and I’ll have Mabel kill a 
young frying chicken for dinner, for I know 
you must be hungry,” she said always think- 
ing of how best to please these two young stal- 
warts. 

“Can’t I kill Mabel — no, I mean the chicken 
— Mrs. Heaton,” suggested Bill, mixing things 
up as usual when he was in high-toned society. 



“MRS, HEATON VOWED SHE WOULD NEVER LET HIM GO AWAY 

AGAIN ” — Page 226 





A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 227 

“No, Bill,” explained Mrs. Heaton, without 
ever pretending 1 to hear his bad break, “Mabel 
is an expert at catching and killing fowls.” 

She departed to give the maid-of-all-work her 
instructions and — pronto — the boys heard the 
unfortunate bird squawking in mortal terror as 
Mabel chased it round the chicken-coop. 

“Jack, is this the same eat-’em-alive Mabel 
what you met down in the jungles of Brazil, that 
you’ve got policin’ up at your home here?” Bill 
asked on the Q. T. 

“Hardly,” replied his pal laughingly, “this 
Mabel is one of those calomel-yellow pieces of 
feminity that comes up from the Bahamas and 
speaks better English than any school teacher 
in Montclair. Old King Oopla’s daughter, Prin- 
cess Mabel, whom I once had the doubtful pleas- 
ure of knowing in the wilds along the Amazon, 
is wearing feathers, while our Mabel here is 
picking feathers, or at least from the way my 
stomach feels I hope she is.” 

“Now, boys,” said Mr. Heaton, when Jack’s 
mother had returned, “tell us all about it. Don’t 
leave out a detail for we want to hear the whole 
story from the time you left until right up to 
the present minute. ’ 9 


228 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 


The boys looked at each other but neither 
spoke. Jack waited for Bill and Bill waited for 
Jack to outline a thumb-nail sketch of their ad- 
ventures. Since Jack remained silent Bill felt 
that the etiquette of the occasion made it incum- 
bent upon him to do so. 

“You see, folks, it was this way: there was 
tree of us in the gang, me, J ack here, and Cap- 
tain Richardson ” 

“Why, Dad, you got my telegrams, didn’t 
your’ Jack broke in, without letting Bill get 
any further. His father nodded in the affirma- 
tive, and his modest son continued, “Well, 
there’s very little more to tell.” 

“Dash it all, Jack, you know that’s not the 
part of it mother and I want to hear about,” 
replied his father. ‘ i What we want you to tell 
us about is your adventures down there in the 
land of cactuses, greasers and bandits.” 

Jack was always questioned in this fashion on 
his return home from his various travels and 
during his recitals of incidents, episodes and ad- 
ventures they hung upon his every word for 
they were mighty proud of their son’s heroism 
and ability. On the other hand Jack felt when 
he was telling about events in which he had fig- 


A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 229 

ured that it sounded too much as though he was 
trying to crack himself up, as he expressed it, 
and so his father had to ply him with questions 
before he could get the full story out of him. 

Half-an-hour later the slightly tinted daugh- 
ter of Ham interrupted Jack’s tale by announc- 
ing dinner. 

‘‘You were saying, Jack, that you and Bill 
were held up just outside of Juarez, but you 
didn ’t say how you escaped, ’ ’ said his mother. 

And Bill replied: “You see it was this way, 
Mrs. Heaton. Jack shot just about one-fifth of 
a second before Chilili did and the greaser 
simply tumbled out of his saddle? ’ 

Mr. Heaton’s eyes bulged out in astonishment 
and delight and Mrs. Heaton gave vent to a 
gasp of mingled surprise and joy, not because 
their son had shot the bandit but because by be- 
ing the quicker he had saved himself from being 
shot. At dinner, tvhich the boys declared the 
best they had ever eaten, bar none, Jack finished 
telling about their exploits in Mexico. 

“That scoundrel Lopez was about as big a 
villian as I ever heard of outside of story 
books,” said Mr. Heaton. “I know that he 
came within an ace of ruining me and many 


230 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

others. Now, boys, I have a little surprise for 
you. There ’s a meeting of the directors of the 
American Consolidated Oil Company this aft- 
ernoon and I want my associates to meet you 
boys. 

4 4 All right, Dad, we ’ll he glad to make their 
acquaintance and see how they stack up. Eh, 
Bill?” 

“Aw, say, Mr. Heaton,” mumbled Bill more 
abashed than ever at this new and unexpected 
turn of affairs, “ do I have to go V ’ 

“Most certainly you do, Bill, ? y insisted Mr. 
Heaton, “but you don’t need to get alarmed. 
Certainly a fellow who had the courage to 
fight Lopez and his gang of desperadoes need 
have no fear of facing a dozen old codgers 
like us.” 

While Mr. Heaton was getting ready to drive 
over to New York Jack took Bill into the li- 
brary and showed him the wall safe where he 
had first encountered Lopez. 

“That was the beginning of it all, Bill.” 

“And that big dinner was about the end of 
me, ’ 7 roared Bill, who showed signs of being un- 
comfortable under the belt. 

“All ready, boys, jump in,” Jack’s father an- 


A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 231 

nounced, and together they went over to New 
York in his new car. The country through 
which he drove them was beautiful and refresh- 
ing and the boys could not lose sight of the fact 
that there was water everywhere. 

“If we could get the Hudson River down 
into Chihuahua we’d make John D. Rocke- 
feller’s millions look like a peseta, what say, 
Bill?” 

“Yep and nope. The Rio Casa Grande is 
good enough for them greasers . We want the 
Hudson River right here, for Noo York 
wouldn’t be Noo York without it,” epitomized 
Bill; “and without Noo York life wouldn’t be 
worth livin’.” 

Landing at Cortlandt street from the ferry, 
which had transferred them across the Hudson 
from Jersey City, Mr. Heaton skillfully piloted 
the big machine in and out of the maze of traf- 
fic with all of the confidence of a profession- 
al chauffeur, until they reached the Equitable 
Building where the new offices of the American 
Consolidated Oil Compcmy were located. 

What with the dinner, the ferry and the traf- 
fic they were somewhat late, and consequently 
it was a quarter after three before they took the 


232 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

express elevator to the twenty-second floor on 
which were the company’s offices. As they shot 
upward with the speed of a rocket it put Bill in 
mind of old times in the Navy. 

"It's like bein , on a submarine chaser in a 
heavy sea,” he sang out. 

The elevator came to a quick but gentle stop 
and on stepping out, there, staring them in the 
face was this legend on the door : 


The 

American Consolidated Oil 
Company 

PRODUCER SHIPPER 

EXPORTER REFINER 

WELLS, TERRAZAS, MEXICO 

John J. Heaton, President 


Mr. Heaton preceded the boys and opened 
the door for them. They entered and passed 
through a reception room where a pretty little 
blonde telephone operator, with one of those 
smiles that wins, vouchsafed the information to 



A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 233 

Mr. Heaton that the directors were already 
there and waiting for him. 

“You can’t beat these Noo York goils for 
looks,” Bill whispered to Jack. 

Mr. Heaton ushered in the boys, but it 
wouldn’t be fair to either side to record what 
Bill thought of them or what they thought of 
him on first sight. What they saw was a rather 
heavy-set young fellow, with a full face, blue 
eyes, large nose, firm mouth with thin lips and 
a protruding chin, all of which was topped off 
by a thick head of brownish red hair, while the 
scar of a fresh knife gash extended diagonally 
across his left cheek. They were not at all im- 
pressed with his appearance. 

What Bill saw were ten gentlemen, all of them 
past the prime of life in so far as age and physi- 
cal well being went but whose grey matter was 
yet intact and capable of functioning to a high 
degree when it came to making money for them- 
selves, provided their interests lay in a country 
where law and order protected them. Some of 
them had iron gray hair, others had white hair 
and a few had no hair at all. All, however, 
were dressed in correct afternoon attire and 
immaculately groomed, while a couple of the 


234 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

sportier old men wore carnations in their but- 
tonholes. They were seated around a huge and 
massive mahogany table. 

“Too bad you haven’t got your spurs on, 
Bill,” whispered Jack. 

“Can that stuff,” whispered Bill back, be- 
wildered. 

As Mr. Pleaton, Jack and Bill entered, the di- 
rectors, dignified as bald eagles and barred 
owls, rose slowly and bowed ceremoniously. 

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Heaton, “this is my 
son, Jack, and his partner, Professor William 
Adams, to whom all of us are indebted for their 
bravery and heroic services in saving our oil 
wells in Terrazas for us.” 

Again the portly gentlemen bowed and seated 
themselves. Jack was tremendously interested, 
and Bill felt about as much at home as a gentle- 
man who is sent to propagate a system of faith 
among the Fiji Islands and who in turn finds 
himself in a cauldron when the head fire-lighter 
touches off the tinder under it, preparing to 
make chow of him. The proceedings were en- 
tirely different from anything Bill had ever seen 
or heard about and both men and meeting were 


A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 235 

entirely out of his class, or at least that's the 
way he felt about it. 

“To us here, far from the scene of hardships 
and bloodshed which these two boys have just 
returned from," continued Mr. Heaton, “the 
reopening of the Consolidated? wells under 
American ownership and management may not 
seem to be a task of any great magnitude, but 
could you have been on the ground at Terrazas 
you would appreciate and realize the tremen- 
dous hazards they encountered and the mag- 
nificent work they have done. 

“I now propose to tell you the story of what 
they did and how they did it and when I have 
finished I am sure that you will all agree with 
me that these two boys deserve not only our 
heartfelt thanks for saving our investments in 
the Terrazas oil fields but something more sub- 
stantial.' ' 

With that Mr. Heaton launched into the story 
and for a solid hour held his fellow directors 
spellbound in their seats. 

“Finally, gentlemen, I move that we donate 
to Mr. Adams here and to Jack a small amount 
of the stock which they have redeemed from 
worthless paper at the risk of their lives. I will 


236 JACK HEATON OIL PROSPECTOR 

pass this paper around and will each of you be 
good enough to write down the amount of stock 
that you think their services merit. ’ ’ 

Mr. Heaton signed his name first and after it 
he marked down $ 2 , 000 . One after another the 
directors received the paper, pledged them- 
selves to contribute a certain amount of their 
personal stock in The American Consolidated 
Oil Company , and returned it to Mr. Heatom 
The total amount was short of $20,000 by $1,500. 
Running his eyes rapidly down the list Mr. 
Heaton discovered where one of the directors 
had donated only $500. 

“You ’ll have to raise your ante, Joe,” he 
called out much to that party’s discomfort, who 
had thought to escape unnoticed with the small 
amount. “Why you hold more stock in this 
company than any of the rest of us and yet 
you’ve only pledged $500.” 

The corpulent financier referred to stroked 
his beautiful white side-whiskers carefully and 
with reverence, thought for a second and then 
smiled. 

“That’s a mistake, John,” he crawfished, “I 
meant to have made it $5,000, but I guess I 
must have forgotten to add the last cipher.” 


A BIG TIME IN THE OLD TOWN 237 

With that the meeting broke up and the di- 
rectors shook hands warmly with the boys and 
all fell into easy conversation, much to Bill's 
surprise. 

The financier whose shrewd policies had crept 
into his pledge was, as Bill afterward learned, 
a real flesh and blood animal and not a human 
icicle as he had at first thought. 

“I say, Professor Adams, I understand from 
Mr. Heaton that you sometimes teach physical 
culture. Do you think you could do anything 
for me?” 

Bill looked him over with the critical eye of a 
doctor, or a prize-fighter, felt of his back and 
chest, pumped his arms, and raised and lowered 
his legs. , 

“Sure I can,” Bill said encouragingly. “Pll 
make a new man of you in six weeks. But I 
don ’t want to start in right away because I Ve 
got so much money I don’t know what to do 
with it unless I buy a baseball club or a string 
of ponies. But Pll take care of youse providin , 
that from now on you’ll lay off that Professor 
stuff, because from now on I’m just plain Bill 
Adams, man-about-town and gentleman of leis- 
ure. See?” 


THE END. 




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